^mm 


BL  51  .07  1922 

Ormond,  Alexander  Thomas, 

1847-1915. 
The  philosophy  of  religion 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 


Alexander  Thomas  Ormoxd 


THE 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 


LECTURES  WRITTEN 

FOR  THE  ELLIOTT  LECTLTIESHIP 

AT  THE  WESTERX  THEOLOGIC.\L  SEMLXARY 

PITTSBURGH,  PEXXA.,  U.  S.  A. 

1916 


BY 

ALEXANDER  THOMAS  ORMOXD,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

LATE    PRESIDENT    OF    GROVE    CITY    COLLEGE 

FORMERLY    MC  COSH    PROFESSOR   OF    PHILOSOPHY    IN 

PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY 


PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

PRINCETON 

LO^^X)N:  HUMPHREY  iHLTOBD 

OXFORD  U>TTERSITT   PRESS 

1922 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
Princeton  University  Press 

Published  1922 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


FOREWORD 

I  am  glad  to  contribute  a  brief  foreword  to 
this  volume  because  it  affords  me  au  opportun- 
ity to  pay  a  tribute  of  affectionate  admiration 
to  my  friend  and  colleague,  Alexander  T.  Or- 
mond. 

He  was  a  man  of  the  most  transparent  sin- 
cerity and  simplicity  of  character  who  could  ab- 
solutely be  relied  upon  in  every  relation  of  life. 
There  was,  besides,  no  lecturer  in  the  University 
whose  lectures  were  more  worth  while.  All  his 
work  was  characterized  by  the  most  honest  in- 
dustry and  solid  judgment. 

I  consider  it  a  privilege  and  honor  to  have 
been  his  colleague. 

WooDROw  Wilson. 
5th  July,  1921. 


PREFACE 

The  eight  lectures  in  this  volume  were  writ- 
ten during  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1915  and 
were  to  have  been  delivered  under  the  Elliott 
Lectureship  at  the  Western  Theological  Semi- 
nary, as  explained  in  Dr.  Kelso's  introduction. 
The  author's  interest  for  several  years  had 
centered  in  the  philosophy  of  religion  and  it  had 
been  his  expressed  purpose  to  write  a  book  on 
the  subject.  These  lectures  were  the  first  fruits 
of  that  intention,  and  death  prevented  any  fur- 
ther elaboration  of  his  ideas. 

The  majority  of  the  lectures  were  left  in 
manuscript  in  the  author's  handwriting,  and 
were  typed  after  his  death.  They  were  later 
read,  and  the  proofs  corrected,  by  us,  his  chil- 
dren ;  and  any  inaccuracy  or  lack  of  clarity  that 
may  appear  can  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that 
the  text  was  never  reviewed  by  the  author,  and 
we  hesitated  to  make  any  but  very  minor 
changes  in  the  text  as  received  by  us.  In  this 
connection  we  wish  to  acknowledge  gratefully 
aid  from  Dr.  Calder  of  Grove  City,  Professor 
Armstrong  of  Wesleyan,  and  Mr.  Minot  Morgan 
of  Detroit. 

Alexander  Thomas  Ormond  was  born  in 
Punxsutawney,  Pa.,  in  April,  1847,  received  the 
ordinary  country  school  education  and  began  to 

•  • 

Vll 


viii  PREFACE 

teach  school  himself  at  the  age  of  seventeen. 
He  taught  and  farmed  till  he  reached  the  age  of 
twenty-six,  when  he  entered  Princeton  College 
with  many  conditions.  lie  graduated  in  1877, 
taking  the  Mental  Science  fellowship,  and  re- 
ceived his  Ph.D.  three  years  later.  He  then 
spent  three  years  at  the  University  of  Minne- 
sota as  Professor  of  History  and  Logic,  return- 
ing to  Princeton  as  Professor  in  1883.  He  took 
a  prominent  part  in  the  councils  of  three  admin- 
istrations :  those  of  Dr.  McCosh,  Dr.  Patton  and 
Mr.  Wilson,  and  in  addition  to  his  work  in  the 
university,  he  gave  courses  of  lectures  in  the 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  for  many 
years.  He  remained  in  Princeton  till  1913, 
when  at  the  age  of  sixty-six,  he  resigned  to  ac- 
cept the  presidency  of  Grove  City  College, 
Pennsylvania.  After  tw^o  arduous,  but  very 
successful  years  there  he  died  suddenly  of  heart 
failure  in  December,  1915.  A  year  before  his 
death  he  had  had  a  thorough  survey  of  his 
physical  condition  by  Dr.  Janeway,  of  Johns 
Hopkins,  because  of  some  unpleasant  symptoms 
referable  to  the  condition  of  his  heart,  and  he 
was  then  told  that  sudden  death  might  be  ex- 
pected any  time  unless  he  would  retire  from 
active  work  and  live  in  a  milder  climate.  He, 
however,  considered  it  a  point  of  honor  to  com- 
plete the  work  he  had  undertaken  in  connection 
with  Grove  City  College.  Three  weeks  before 
his  death  he  stated  to  one  of  us  that  he  thought 
he  had  brought  his  work  to  a  successful  conclu- 


PREFACE  ix 

sion  and  that  later  in  the  winter  he  would  retire, 
remove  to  a  milder  climate  and  devote  himself 
to  writing  his  book  on  the  Philosophy  of  Re- 
ligion. 

None  of  us,  his  children,  are  in  any  degree 
capable  of  appreciating  the  Philosophical  value 
of  this  book  of  lectures  or  of  estimating  our 
father's  place  as  a  philosopher,  but  we  could 
not  fail  to  appreciate  in  him  those  qualities 
which  impressed  all  who  came  into  contact  with 
him — his  broad  humanity,  simplicity  and  inde- 
pendence of  character — and  singular  intellec- 
tual honesty. 

In  publishing  this  book  we  wish  to  dedicate 
it  to  his  memory,  as  a  token  of  our  increasing 
admiration. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction  by  Dr.  James  Kelso xiii 

Part  I.     Religious  Knowledge 
Lecture         I.     The  Problem  of  Religious 


Lecture 


Lecture       II. 


Lecture      III. 


Lecture      IV. 


Knowledge    

The  Problem  of  Religious 
Knowledge,  (continued) . . 

The  Rational  Type  of  Re- 
ligious Knowledge   

The  Synthesis  of  the  Me- 
diate and  the  Immediate  in 
Religious  Knowledge  .... 


Part  II.    The  Soul 
V.     The   Soul   as   Subject   of 


or. 


48 


72 


Lecture  VI. 
Lecture  VII. 
Lecture  VIII. 


Religious  Experience  ....     97 

The  Agency  of  Man 120 

The  Overcoming  of  Evil.   141 
The  Destiny  of  the  Soul. .  172 


INTRODUCTION 

The  Elliott  Lectureship  was  founded  by  the 
alumni  and  friends  of  the  Western  Theological 
Seminary  as  a  memorial  to  the  Rev.  David  El- 
liott, D.D.,  the  Seminary's  first  professor  of 
Systematic  Theology  (1836-74).  The  object  of 
the  foundation  was  to  provide  lectures  "in  the 
defence  of  revealed  truth."  In  the  course  of 
the  years  some  of  the  most  distinguished  Brit- 
ish scholars  have  lectured  on  this  foundation. 
There  appear  on  the  roll  of  the  Elliott  Lecture- 
ship, for  example,  the  names  of  Rev.  Professor 
Alexander  F.  Mitchell,  who  treated  "The  His- 
tory of  the  Westminster  Assembly"  (1880); 
Principal  A.  M.  Fairbairn,  who  lectured  on 
"Theism  and  Natural  Religion"  (1890);  Rev. 
Professor  James  Orr,  whose  subject  was  "The 
Progress  of  Dogma"  (1897) ;  and  Rev.  Profes- 
sor David  Smith,  whose  theme  was  "The  His- 
toric Jesus"  (1912).  It  was  in  connection  with 
the  Elliott  foundation  also  that  Rev.  James  S. 
Dennis,  D.D.,  an  American  scholar,  made  a  not- 
able permanent  contribution  to  the  literature  of 
modern  missions.  These  lectures,  somewhat  en- 
larged, appeared  later  in  three  volumes,  en- 
titled "Christian  Missions  and  Social  Prog- 
ress." Realizing  that,  on  account  of  a  long  and 
intimate  familiarity  with  the  problems  of  phi- 

xiii 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

losophy  and  its  relations  to  theology,  as  well  as 
on  account  of  his  mature  judgment,  President 
A.  T.  Ormond,  of  Grove  City  College,  was  ex- 
ceptionally well  prepared  to  discuss  the  funda- 
mental problem  of  the  relations  of  philosophy 
and  religion,  the  faculty  of  the  Seminary  unani- 
mously elected  him  to  treat  this  theme  in  a 
course  on  the  Elliott  foundation.  The  appoint- 
ment was  made  in  December,  1913,  and  the  lec- 
tures were  to  have  been  delivered  sometime 
during  the  Seminary  year  1915-16.  But  in  the 
providence  of  God,  President  Ormond  was  never 
to  fulfil  this  engagement.  The  lectures  had 
been  written  and  the  date  for  their  delivery  defi- 
nitely set,  when  suddenly,  while  busy  with  the 
duties  of  his  office,  Dr.  Ormond  was  summoned 
to  that  realm  where  metaphysical  speculation 
ceases  and  ultimate  reality  is  apprehended. 
Notwithstanding  these  untoward  circumstances. 
President  Ormond 's  mature  conclusions  were 
not  lost.  Soon  after  his  death  a  part  of  the 
course  was  read  before  the  students  and  faculty 
of  the  Seminary  by  his  colleague,  the  Rev.  R. 
S.  Calder,  Ph.D.,  and  arrangements  were  made 
for  their  publication.  The  war  intervened, 
however,  and  made  it  necessary  to  postpone  the 
issue  of  the  volume  which  is  now  given  to  the 
public  as  a  worthy  companion  to  the  other  mem- 
bers of  this  series  of  lectures. 

James  A.  Kelso. 


PART  I 
RELIGIOUS  KNOWLEDGE 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

RELIGIOUS  KNOWLEDGE 

Lectube  I.     The  Pboblem  of  Religious 
Knowledge 

The  problem  I  propose  to  discuss  in  this  and 
the  following  lecture  is  that  of  the  primary 
foundations  of  religious  certitude,  whether  im- 
mediate knowledge,  or  inference,  or  faith,  or 
the  sense  of  value.  There  have  been  partisans 
of  each  of  these  claimants,  and  it  cannot  be  de- 
nied that  each  has  contributed  an  important 
part  to  the  building  up  of  the  body  of  what  we 
may  call  religious  truth.  But  the  question  of 
the  primary  source  of  religious  certitude  is 
special,  and  ought  to  admit  of  some  definite 
answer.  Now,  the  proposition  that  best  ex- 
presses my  own  belief  in  the  matter  may  be 
stated  as  follows :  Man  is  endowed  by  nature, 
and  by  virtue  of  his  being  a  potentially  self- 
conscious  being,  with  a  religious  consciousness, 
which  is  the  organ  and  source  of  certain  pri- 
mary verities  that  constitute  for  him  the  first 
data  of  a  possible  religious  experience.  In  the 
light  of  this  proposition,  it  is  clear  that  we  will 
have  to  deny  that  either  faith  or  the  sense  of 
value  can  be  taken  as  a  primary  source  of  re- 
ligious truth.    Let  us  consider  very  briefly  here 

1 


2  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

the  claims  of  each  to  be  a  primary  source.  It 
is  clear  in  the  first  place  that  what  we  call  a 
judgment  of  value  is  not  primarily  a  judgment 
of  truth,  but  rather  of  our  appreciation  of 
something,  whether  it  be  true  or  not.  It  can 
only  acquire  epistemological  value  when  we  are 
led  to  say  of  it,  that  it  is  so  dear  or  precious,  so 
essential  to  the  realization  of  the  highest  ideals, 
that  it  must  needs  be  true.  In  other  words,  to 
enlarge  the  position  of  Kant,  the  truth  of  a 
proposition  is  a  postulate  of  its  value.  This 
proves  that  the  judgment  of  value  is  only  an  in- 
direct or  mediate  judgment  of  truth.  In  the 
second  place,  if  we  analyze  what  we  may  call  the 
judgment  of  faith,  it  will  become  apparent  that, 
whatever  the  degree  of  assurance  it  may  pos- 
sess, it  is  only  the  assertion,  on  mediate  evi- 
dence, of  the  truth  of  something  that  is  not  now 
present.  Now,  the  evidence  on  which  faith  rests 
may  be  either  some  insight  of  immediate  knowl- 
edge, or  some  consideration  of  value,  and  the 
point  of  interest  here  is  that  in  neither  case  is 
it  primary,  but  its  appeal  is  to  something  that 
involves  primary  truth  data.  Furthermore, 
just  as  it  is  clear  that,  in  any  great  field  of 
truth,  certitude  cannot  rest,  in  the  last  analysis, 
on  inference,  but  must  have  as  its  basis  some 
first-hand  touch  of  reality :  so  here,  if  the  super- 
structure of  religious  experience  is  to  be  at 
all  reducible  to  a  body  of  assured  truth,  its 
judgments  must  be  capable  of  being  reduced 
back  to   some   first-hand   facts   of  knowledge. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  3 

Neither  faith,  which  is  a  kind  of  inference,  nor 
inference,  nor  consideration  of  value,  can  sup- 
ply the  first  act  in  the  drama  of  religious  truth. 

We  come  back  then  to  the  terms  of  the  origi- 
nal proposition — that  the  primary  source  of  re- 
ligious truth  is  to  be  found  in  an  original  con- 
sciousness, which  is  inseparable  from  man's 
self-consciousness,  and  is  in  fact  an  integral 
part  of  it.  That  man,  by  virtue  of  being  self- 
conscious,  is  also  religious, — that,  in  the  same 
process  by  which  he  finds  himself,  he  also  finds 
his  transcendent  other,  is,  I  feel  sure,  the  only 
ultimate  ground  on  which  the  claim  that  re- 
ligion is  a  natural  endowment  of  man  can  rest. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  analysis  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness,  I  wish,  however,  to  con- 
sider briefly  at  this  point  the  claim  of  Professor 
Hoffding,  in  his  Philosophy  of  Religion,  that 
religion  can  supply  no  valid  principle  of  world- 
explanation.  Hoffding 's  claim  is  that  the  prin- 
cipal of  natural  causation,  as  employed  by 
science,  is  the  only  valid  principle  of  knowledge, 
and  that  the  theoretic  principle  to  which  relig- 
ion lays  claim  cannot  maintain  itself  in  face  of 
criticism.  He  rightly  names  this  the  principle 
of  teleology,  and  holds  that  the  theoretic  preten- 
sions of  religion  stand  or  fall  with  the  validity 
of  teleology  as  a  principle  of  world-interpreta- 
tion. The  religious  view  of  the  world  is  the 
teleological,  and,  should  teleology  be  proved 
false,  or,  in  fact,  too  weak  to  bear  the  burden  of 
world-explanation,  it  follows  that  religion  would 


4  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BELIGION 

be  logically  bound  to  give  up  its  theoretic 
claims,  and  to  content  itself  with  the  world- 
view  of  science,  which  finds  either  no  place,  or, 
at  least,  a  subordinate  place,  for  teleology.  The 
purpose  of  Hoff ding's  book  is  to  induce  religion 
to  give  up  the  theoretic  claim  which  brings  it 
into  conflict  with  science,  and  to  plant  itself 
solidly  and  exclusively  on  the  principle  of  the 
conservation  of  values.  Hoffding  sees  clearly 
that  no  principle  of  unconditional  value  for  the 
interpretation  of  reality  can  be  deduced  from 
the  judgment  of  value.  To  Hoffding  belongs 
the  credit  of  having  made  this  perfectly  evident. 
His  position  cannot  be  successfully  called  in 
question  by  anyone  who  admits  the  soundness  of 
his  judgment  in  regard  to  teleology. 

Without  entering  into  an  elaborate  discussion 
here,  I  wish  simply  to  give  certain  reasons  why 
I  cannot  accept  Hoffding 's  low  estimate  of  tele- 
ology. In  the  first  place,  it  is  evident  that  his 
conclusion  is  not  founded  on  any  adequate,  criti- 
cal study  of  teleology  itself.  There  is  a  popular 
and  superficial  conception  of  teleology  which 
has,  unfortunately,  dominated  the  greater  body 
of  our  religious  literature  of  the  past.  It  is  that 
conception  that  proceeds  on  the  assumption  of 
a  conflict  between  teleology  on  the  one  hand,  and 
natural  causation  and  mechanism  on  the  other, 
leading  to  the  false  and  mistaken  attempt  either 
to  substitute  teleology  for  natural  causation 
and  mechanism,  or  to  limit  these  in  their  scope 
and  seek  a  place  for  teleology  in  the  gaps  that 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  5 

are  to  be  found  in  the  mechanical  armor.    The 
alternative  of  substitution  is  the  bolder  of  the 
two  proposals,  and,  on  account  of  its  radicalism, 
has  commended  itself  to  certain  idealistic  phi- 
losophers like  Schelling ;  but  neither  alternative 
has  been  able  to  stem  the  tide  of  science,  and 
Hoffding  is  on  safe  ground  when  he  rejects  as 
unsound  the  principle  as  thus  conceived.    There 
is,  however,  a  profounder  conception  of  teleol- 
ogy that,  to  my  mind,  lifts  it  above  the  level  of 
such  criticism  and  vindicates  its  claim  to  be  a 
true  principle  for  the  interpretation  of  the  real. 
In   the   first   place,   a   profound   psychological 
study  of  experience  shows  that,  at  the  founda- 
tion of  our  world-view,  there  is  operating  a 
principle  of  selection,  which  underlies  and  af- 
fects all  the  processes  by  which  we  develop  a 
view  of  any  part  of  our  world.     Perception, 
which  gives  our  first  judgments  about  the  world, 
is,  in  a  primary  sense,  selective,  and  the  later 
stages  of  mental  activity  are  determined  by  the 
same  principle.    Now,  when  we  study  selection, 
we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that,  even  in  the 
first  stages  of  perception,  there  is  some  quality 
of  mind  that  renders  it  primarily  teleological, — 
that  leads  it  to  act,  not  mechanically,  but  with 
an  activity  motived  by  the  sense  of  something 
more  or  less  definite,  which  it  is  seeking  to  rea- 
lize.   In  the  lowest  stages  there  is  the  germ  of 
an  end-motive  that  instinctively  knows  what  to 
appropriate  and  what  to  reject.    If  we  follow 
this  motive  into  the  higher  stages  of  mentality, 


6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

we  find  it  taking  on  more  definitely  and  con- 
sciously the  teleological  form.  When  we  pene- 
trate beneath  the  surface  of  the  mind's  activity 
and  come  on  what  we  may  designate  its  onto- 
logical  motive,  we  find  that  it  is  always  tele- 
ological and  ideal.  To  illustrate  briefly  what 
we  propose  to  elaborate  more  fully  at  a  later 
stage  in  these  lectures :  above  the  lower  selective 
range  of  perception  there  is  the  epistemologi- 
cal  activity  of  apperception  which  gives  us  the 
objects  or  things  of  cognition  and  certain  rela- 
tions that  are  central  in  our  judgments  about 
the  w^orld.  Very  briefly  stated,  the  thing  of  per- 
ception is  an  object  that  the  mind  refuses  to 
regard  simply  as  a  plexus  of  qualities  w^hich  it 
can  reclaim  as  its  own  subjective  possessions. 
It  was  on  the  rock  of  this  refusal  that  Berkeley- 
anism  in  its  first  draft  made  shipwreck  and  had 
to  be  modified.  For,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
Berkeley  had  forever  dispelled  the  illusion  of 
material  substance,  the  mind  refused  to  leave 
the  place  of  substance  empty;  and  rightly,  for 
this  reason:  Strictly  speaking  the  place  had 
never  been  occupied  by  material  substance,  but 
rather  by  the  mind's  own  ideal  which  we  may 
read  in  the  following  language ;  the  qualities  of 
things  are  simply  the  mind's  own  ideas  in  an 
objective  form  of  existence,  and,  like  these 
ideas,  on  their  subjective  side,  involve  some  uni- 
tary and  perdurable  subject  (substance)  of 
which  they  are  the  plurality  of  phenomenal 
manifestations.     In  other  words,  the  thing  is 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  7 

ontologically  a  teleological  ideal  of  the  mind. 
The  thing  is  the  first  overt  act  of  mind  in  build- 
ing a  teleological  world. 

If  now  we  enter  the  field  of  the  judgment  of 
cognition,  we  find  the  same  truth  staring  us  in 
the  face.  When  we  enter  a  room  and  recognize 
it  as  the  same  room  we  were  in  yesterday  or 
last  week,  we  pronounce  the  judgment  of  iden- 
tity, which,  in  its  ontological  or  underlying  mo- 
tive, means  that  our  mind  has  appealed  from 
the  perishable  and  broken  order  of  our  own 
perceptions  as  empirical  to  an  order  of  ex- 
istence that  is  unbroken,  and  that  is  perdurable 
through  the  change  and  perishability  of  the  em- 
pirical. If  we  deny  this,  we  reduce  our  world 
to  a  flux  which  supplies  no  standing  ground 
for  any  judgment  whatsoever.  Here  again  we 
find  that  the  mind,  in  the  self -committal  of  its 
judgment,  has,  in  spite  of  Hume's  destructive 
analysis,  refused  to  leave  the  place  of  material 
substance  empty,  and  has  filled  it  with  its  own 
ideal  of  being  that  is  unitary  and  perdurable. 
Again,  if  we  study  the  activity  of  mind  in  the 
mediate  judgment  that  expresses  itself  formally 
in  the  syllogism,  but  ontologically  and  really  in 
the  search  for  grounding,  we  find  that  the  mind 
is  just  as  insistent  in  refusing  to  accept  the 
terms  of  a  world-plurality  as  final,  and  that,  in 
its  demand  for  an  ontological  ground,  it  is  not 
obeying  any  law  of  things  imposed  on  it  from 
without,  but  rather  the  law  of  its  own  ideal, 


8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

which  requires  the  many  and  changing  to  be 
grounded  in  the  unitary  and  jDcrdurable. 

If  we  turn  to  another  part  of  the  field  and 
consider  the  world  from  the  point  of  view  of 
natural  causation,  we  find  the  same  kind  of  a 
situation,  AVhen  the  empiricist  finding  the  only 
principle  of  things  open  to  his  vision  to  be  that 
of  natural  causation,  which  gives  us  a  series  of 
conditional  antecedents  and  consequents  that 
commit  us  to  the  treadmill  of  an  infinite  round 
but  reveals  no  ground,  the  mind  following  its 
ontological  motive  refuses  to  rest  in  a  world  of 
eternal  contingency,  and,  following  a  deeper  in- 
sight, fills  the  vacant  place  of  ground-being  with 
its  own  ideal,  that  of  a  unitary  and  perdurable 
being  that  is  equally  related  to  every  part  of 
the  contingent  series,  and  in  the  light  of  which 
it  is  to  be  interpreted  as  a  manifestation  of  a 
system  of  reality. 

In  this  brief  statement,  I  have  endeavored  to 
sketch  the  outline  of  a  deeper  doctrine  of  tele- 
ology, which  virtually  identifies  it  with  the  prin- 
ciple of  ontology  itself.  Ontology  is  the  science 
of  being,  and  its  central  problem  is  to  determine 
the  final  concept  of  reality.  The  ontological  mo- 
tive is  the  central  inner  motive  of  all  mentality. 
It  inspires  the  initial  selective  activity  of  mind, 
and  is  the  prime  mover  in  all  the  mind's  sub- 
sequent activities,  forbidding  it  to  stop  short  of 
an  ideal  construction  that  shall  be  final  and 
satisfactory.  Teleology,  in  its  deeper  sense,  is 
the  same  process  from  the  standpoint  of  its 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  9 

most  obvious  term.  A  teleological  process  is 
one  that  is  aiming  at  an  end,  which  is  not,  how- 
ever, a  mere  end  standing  as  a  last  link  of  a 
chain,  but,  rather,  the  explicit  expression  of  a 
motive  that  has  been  the  selective  lode-stone, 
the  provisional  guide,  and  the  purposive  activ- 
ity out  of  which  the  motive  has  emerged  as  the 
realized  end  or  ideal  of  the  whole. 

By  identifying  teleology  with  the  inner  onto- 
logical  motive  of  all  reality,  it  is  clear  that  it 
becomes  a  more  profound  principle,  and  it  be- 
comes evident  that  Hoffding,  in  rejecting  tele- 
ology as  a  source  of  real  knowledge,  is  casting 
aside  the  central  principle  of  idealism  itself. 
Now,  I  am  not  holding  a  brief  here  for  idealism 
or  any  particular  form  of  it.  What  I  have 
aimed  at  more  particularly  is  the  demonstration 
of  the  fact  that,  when  we  penetrate  to  the  inner 
constitutive  motive  of  knowledge,  we  find  that 
it  is  teleological,  and  that  to  deny  its  soundness 
as  a  principle  of  knowledge  is  to  deny  the  valid- 
ity of  all  knowledge.  In  its  profounder  sense, 
moreover,  it  is  clear  that  it  can  no  longer  be  re- 
garded as  antagonistic  to  either  mechanism  or 
natural  causation.  A  mechanical  situation  may 
also  (in  fact  will)  be,  in  a  deeper  sense,  teleo- 
logical; and  a  product  of  natural  causes  may, 
in  a  profounder  sense,  be  the  manifestation  of 
design  and  purpose.  We  have  only  to  study  the 
situation  in  order  to  find  this  to  be  the  true  re- 
sult of  analysis.  Let  us  take  any  work  of  art, 
say  a  cathedral,  and  study  its  construction  from 


10  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  point  of  view  of  ordinary  sense-observa- 
tion. We  will  find  that  the  whole  from  that  ex- 
ternal point  of  view  will  be  a  phenomenon  of 
mechanical  construction  under  the  operation  of 
natural  forces  and  causes.  Every  part  of  the 
work  can  be  accounted  for  in  this  way,  and  the 
circle  will  be  mechanically  complete,  so  that  no 
place  will  be  left  for  the  intrusion  of  any  other 
kind  of  agency.  Moreover,  the  whole,  when 
completed,  although  it  expresses  an  idea  which 
satisfies  a  rational  demand,  must  yet  from  the 
standpoint  of  mechanism  be  either  ascribed  to 
a  kind  of  accident  and  regarded  as  an  epi-phe- 
nomenon,  or  referred  to  the  necessity  inherent 
in  the  composition  of  physical  forces.  In  no 
case  can  the  result  be  ascribed,  in  any  part  of  it, 
to  any  agency  lying  outside  of  the  pure  me- 
chanical. The  logical  conclusion  from  this  point 
of  view  will  be,  therefore,  that  the  rational  idea 
or  design  that  is  present  in  the  completed  edi- 
fice is  a  pure  come-outer  at  the  end  of  the  pro- 
cess, and  has  had  no  causal  agency  toward  de- 
termining the  result. 

Now,  this  seems  to  be  quite  obvious,  and  in 
accordance  with  strict,  mechanical  logic,  and  it 
has  for  us  this  significance,  that,  arguing  from 
mechanical  data,  we  can  reach  only  mechanical 
conclusions.  In  other  words,  the  mechanical 
system  is  self -completing,  and  no  point  of  limit 
can  be  found.  But  it  will  also  be  clear  from  this 
example  that,  while  no  limit  can  be  found  to 
mechanism  within  mechanical  conceptions,  yet 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  11 

mechanism  itself  expresses  a  certain  limit  to 
our  insight  into  the  reality  of  the  situation  as 
a  whole.  For  we  know  from  other  data,  which 
have  their  roots  in  the  inner  regions  of  our  own 
self-conscious  activity,  that  another  kind  of 
agency  has  been  at  work  from  the  beginning, 
and 'that  to  this  agency  is  due,  especially,  the 
ontological  motives  that  have  led  to  the  incep- 
tion of  the  enterprise,  as  well  as  the  conception 
of  the  idea  or  plan  that  is  expressed  in  the  com- 
pleted work  of  the  cathedral  as  a  whole.  Fur- 
thermore, it  will  be  clear,  in  view  of  this  insight, 
that  not  a  single  stone  takes  its  place  in  the 
structure;  not  a  single  mechanical  force  oper- 
ates in  any  specific  direction;  not  the  smallest 
detail  of  construction  is  effected  without  the 
touch  of  the  idea-purpose,  as  we  may  call  it,  in 
the  mind  of  the  architect,  and  communicated  to 
the  minds  of  the  subordinate  agents. 
•  Now,  this  whole  insight,  which  alone  satisfies 
the  requirements  of  reason,  makes  clear  also 
what  i3art  of  the  whole  must  be  ascribed  to 
extra-mechanical  agencies.  The  parts  that 
mechanism  does  not  explain  will  be  the  origina- 
tion of  the  idea-plan,  and  the  direction  of  the 
mechanical  forces  to  its  realization.  Origina- 
tion and  direction  are  the  two  specific  attributes 
of  teleological  agency  as  distinguished  from 
that  which  is  mechanical.  If,  however,  the  at- 
tempt be  made  to  turn  the  point  of  this  reason- 
ing by  distinguishing,  as  some  have  done,  be- 
tween art  and  nature,  on  the  ground  that  art 


12         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

presents  a  duality  of  agencies  that  is  not  found 
in  nature,  we  answer  that  this  is  the  very  ques- 
tion at  issue.  Allowing  that,  from  the  stand- 
point of  sense-observation,  the  mechanism  of 
nature  has  no  limit;  that  mechanism,  to  outer 
observation,  presents  a  complete  circle;  it  is 
yet  true  that  mechanism  presents  an  order  or 
system  that  expresses  an  idea  of  reason;  that 
this  gives  rise  to  the  question  whether  mechan- 
ism be  self-explanatory,  or  must  refer  for  final 
explanation  to  agencies  that  are  extra-mechani- 
cal. The  answer  to  this  question  will,  I  think, 
bring  to  light  the  fact  that  nature  presents  to 
thought  the  same  issue.  For  nature  does  not 
reveal  the  motive  in  which  its  processes  origi- 
nate. Nor,  as  Lotze  has  pointed  out,  does  the 
operation  of  mechanical  forces  account  for  that 
specific  action  of  the  several  forces  which  im- 
parts to  them  their  individual  character.  If 
any  particular  force  acts  in  a  given  way  and  in 
no  other,  this  is  a  fact  that  cannot  be  explained 
by  the  mere  positing  of  a  force ;  but  the  idiosyn- 
cracy  of  the  force  raises  a  question  also:  Why 
it  invariably  acts  in  this  particular  waj^  and  in 
no  other.  In  other  words,  quality  is  a  charac- 
teristic of  idea,  and,  as  such,  transcends  the 
mere  mechanical.  Furthermore,  the  order  of 
the  whole  of  nature,  or  of  a  part  of  it,  is  but  an 
expression  in  the  form  of  developed  results  of 
this  same  transcendence.  The  order  or  system 
in  nature  is  no  more  explicable,  in  any  final 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         13 

sense,  by  the  mechanical  than  are  the  same  phe- 
nomena in  the  work  of  art. 

We  seem  to  be  justified,  then,  in  drawing  the 
following  conclusion:  from  the  standpoint  of 
a  complete  insight,  mechanism,  which,  in  itself, 
is  unlimited  and  self -completing,  stands  limited 
and  conditioned  by  an  insight  that  is  transcen- 
dent; that  this  insight,  proceeding  from  data 
furnished  by  our  own  conscious  inner  agency, 
supplies  a  criterion  to  reason  that  fixes  for  it 
the  standard  of  finality  of  judgment  in  an  idea 
or  ideal  that  both  expresses  the  inner  ontologi- 
cal  motive  of  all  activity,  and  also  the  teleologi- 
cal  end  that  is  the  directive  agency  in  determin- 
ing the  rational  result.  If  this  be  true,  mechan- 
ism will  be  the  outer  form  of  an  agency,  (the 
form  in  which  it  presents  itself  to  outer  sense- 
observation)  that,  in  an  inner  and  more  funda- 
mental sense  is  teleological  and  rational.  And 
it  will  follow  that  the  mechanical  explanation  of 
any  natural  phenomenon  does  not  thereby  shut 
out  the  teleological,  but  rather,  in  the  light  of  a 
complete  insight,  calls  for  it. 

Now,  what  I  have  been  endeavoring  to  prove 
in  this  part  of  my  argument  is  that,  when  pro- 
foundly interpreted,  the  principle  of  teleology 
is  the  only  principle  that,  in  the  light  of  a  com- 
plete insight,  will  lead  to  an  interpretation  of 
things  that  reason  can  admit  as  final  in  its  type. 
And  it  is  very  significant  that  this  type  is  to  be 
come  upon  at  first-hand  only  in  our  self-con- 
scious  experience.     There   alone   we   find   the 


14         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

form  of  an  agency  that  acts  teleologically. 
Upon  this  form  reason  seizes,  and,  by  a  subtle 
use  of  analogy,  generalizes  it  and  makes  it  the 
criterion  by  which  it  judges  reality  in  general. 
Coming  back  now  to  the  theme  from  which 
we  have  made  this  long  digression, — the  prob- 
lem of  the  religious  consciousness;  we  have  al- 
ready contended  that  man  is,  by  virtue  of  his 
nature  as  a  self-conscious  being,  also  a  religious 
being,  and  that  his  religious  consciousness, 
which  has  clearly  manifested  itself  in  his  his- 
tory, must  rest,  like  all  other  primary  forms  of 
consciousness,  on  some  data  that  are  immedi- 
ately given  and  will  underlie  all  deliverances  of 
inference,  or  faith,  or  sense  of  value.  This  con- 
tention I  shall  proceed,  in  the  remainder  of  this 
lecture,  to  elaborate.  When  we  say  that  man 
is,  by  virtue  of  his  fundamental  nature,  a  re- 
ligious being,  we  mean  to  say  that  religion  bears 
such  a  relation  to  his  nature  that  it  will  affect 
both  his  conscious  and  his  unconscious  (or,  bet- 
ter, his  sub-conscious)  processes.  We  mean 
that  he  is  a  religious  being  in  the  same,  or  even 
more  fundamental  sense,  that  he  is  a  social  be- 
ing. He  does  not  need  to  await  the  development 
of  his  consciousness  into  any  form  of  definite 
awareness  in  order  to  become  a  social  being. 
He  becomes  social  in  the  first  profound  sense  he 
has  of  the  existence  of  beings  of  his  own  kind. 
This  sense  of  kind  is  the  primary  condition,  not 
the  result,  of  sociality.  In  other  words,  we  do 
not  have  to  consciously  reach  any  definite  ex- 
perience of  our  own  kind  in  order  to  establish 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  15 

the  germ  of  the  social.  Rather,  as  we  have  con- 
cluded, the  opposite  order  is  the  true  order. 
At  the  basis  of  the  social,  and  as  one  of  the 
primal  terms  in  the  development  of  self-con- 
sciousness, is  what  we  may  call  the  sense  of  the 
presence  of  the  other;  not  the  sense  of  the  pres- 
ence of  the  other — not  ourself.  This  would  be 
too  erudite,  but  merely  the  sense,  in  germ,  of 
the  other  self.  The  history  of  the  child  shows 
this  to  be  true.  The  first  social  world  of  the 
child  is  a  world  of  beings  like  itself,  with  which 
it  instinctively  associates.  Only  later  it  begins 
to  distinguish  its  own  kind  from  other  species 
of  existence.  This  being  true,  the  child's  first 
awareness  of  its  other,  will  be  of  the  nature  of 
a  perception  in  which  the  defining  or  noetic  ac- 
tivity will  be  wholly  latent  and  unconscious.  It 
will  not  be  difficult  to  determine  the  type  of  this 
activity,  for  it  could  not  be  other  than  a  sense 
of  its  own  type  of  being.  Its  first  social  acts 
can  be  defined  as  its  largely  unconscious  sense 
for  itself  or  its  own  in  another.  To  use  an  il- 
lustration for  which  I  am  indebted,  I  believe,  to 
William  James,  a  piece  of  iron,  in  the  presence 
of  a  magnetic  object,  will  be  put  into  a  state  of 
excitement,  which,  were  it  endowed  with  a  bit 
of  consciousness,  would  be  the  feeling  of  some- 
thing that  it  could  not  otherwise  define.  This 
primary  feeling  would  be  the  sense  of  a  pres- 
ence in  connection  with  which  it  would  have 
what  the  psychologists  call  the  reality-feeling. 
Now,  if  the  iron  were  really  a  being,  gifted  with 


16  PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION 

the  potentiality  of  self-consciousness,  it  would 
have  in  it  the  germ  of  a  noetic  activity  that 
would  be  aroused  by  this  sense  of  presence  to 
the  effort  to  define:  to  determine  the  what  or 
kind  of  existence,  and  the  first  effort  of  the  de- 
fining mind  would  take  the  form,  as  I  have  in- 
dicated, of  an  instinctive  reading  of  the  type  of 
its  own  being  into  the  other.  This,  I  feel  sure, 
will  be  taken  as  describing  fairly  well  the  first 
act  of  the  social  consciousness.  It  will  have, 
as  its  datum,  the  sense,  further  undetermined, 
of  a  presence,  which  will  arouse  the  noetic  ac- 
tivity into  a  germinal  effort  to  define. 

"Wliat  is  true  of  the  social  will  hold  in  any 
primary  form  of  mental  activity.  There  will 
be  an  immediate  datum,  that  of  existence,  and 
this  will  arouse  the  noetic  effort  to  define.  Now, 
in  claiming  that  the  religious  consciousness  is 
a  primary  form,  and  perhaps  the  most  funda- 
mental of  all  the  types,  I  have  not  made  any 
genetic  claim  that  religious  experience  will 
antedate,  in  time,  other  forms  of  experience, 
such  as  the  social  and  the  awareness  of  objects 
of  sense.  This  may  or  may  not  be  true.  What 
I  do  contend  for  is  that  the  religious  conscious- 
ness is  primary  in  the  sense  that  it  is  an  origi- 
nal type,  not  derived  from  any  other  more  pri- 
mary, nor  a  modification  of  it.  It  is  our  busi- 
ness here,  then,  to  try,  if  possible,  to  determine 
the  distinctive  quality  or  qualities  of  the  re- 
ligious type,  which  differentiate  it  from  any 
other  primary  type,  and  constitute  its  distinc- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         17 

tive  character.  In  this  enterprise,  we  are  fortu- 
nate to  have  the  assistance  of  almost  every 
thinker  who  has  dealt  with  the  problem  and  at- 
tempted to  give  a  definition  of  religion.  If  you 
study  the  current  definitions  of  religion,  you 
will  find  that  the  large  majority  of  them  agree 
in  the  judgment  that  the  differential  quality  of 
the  religious  consciousness  is  the  sense,  or 
feeling,  of  the  presence  to  man  of  some  tran- 
scendent being  or  order,  which  he  is  convinced, 
somehow  vitally  affects  his  life  and  destiny. 
Extracting  this  core  from  the  definitions,  let  us 
regard  it  as  the  one  most  irrefutable  datum  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  In  regard  to  it, 
two  questions  may  be  asked.  (1)  What  are  the 
implications  of  this  datum  when  critically  de- 
termined? (2)  In  its  appearance  as  an  active 
factor  in  the  life  of  man,  can  it  be  said  to 
antedate  other  types  of  experience?  Now,  the 
first  of  these  questions  is  one  of  analysis.  The 
definitions  give  us  the  datum  in  the  sense  or 
perception  of  the  presence  of  some  transcendent 
being  or  order.  This,  as  you  will  observe,  does 
not  define,  in  any  sense,  the  type  of  being,  and 
it  is  important  that  we  should  make  no  assump- 
tions of  type  in  this,  our  initial,  inquiry.  Nor, 
on  the  other  hand,  may  we  minimize  the  datum 
into  the  mere  subjective  sense  of  transcendence. 
Like  all  forms  of  cognitive  activity,  there  is  the 
sense  of  existence  (of  objectivity)  in  its  first 
manifestations.  The  primary  datum  may, 
therefore,  without  violence,  be  spread  out  into 


18  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  form  of  a  germinal  affirmation  of  the  ex- 
istence of  something  transcendent.  In  this 
form  it  becomes,  in  truth,  the  datum  of  a  type 
of  experience,  which  is  distinctive  and  ranks 
with  other  primary  types.  Now,  I  have  em- 
ployed the  term  *'type"  here  in  the  generic 
sense,  as  simply  indicating  a  form  of  experi- 
ence, which  has  the  transcendent  as  its  object 
of  determination,  without  further  specifying. 
Later  on,  we  shall  have  occasion  to  use  the  word 
"type"  in  a  narrower  sense.  Summing  up  our 
results  here,  we  may  say  that  the  primary 
datum  of  the  religious  consciousness  is  the 
sense  of  a  transcendent  object,  to  which  we 
stand  immediately  related. 

To  the  second  question,  we  may  not  be  able  to 
return  so  specific  an  answer.  That  the  religious 
consciousness  is  a  primary  endowment  of  the 
race  is  a  contention  that  is  not  only  capable  of 
intrinsic  justification,  but  also  one  that  finds 
strong  confirmation  in  the  history  of  religion, 
and  in  the  relation  it  has  borne  to  other  forms 
of  human  experience.  The  testimony  of  history 
to  the  fact  that  forms  of  religious  society  ante- 
date all  others  is  practically  unanimous.  The 
germs  of  polity  and  of  organized  sociality  are 
to  be  found  in  religious  motives.  The  same  is 
true  of  art  and  morality.  This  is  so  overwhelm- 
ingly demonstrated  that  there  is  now  no  longer 
any  hesitation  on  the  part  of  historians  of  cul- 
ture in  assigning  to  religion  the  parental  rela- 
tion.   All  the  forms  of  human  civilization  have 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         19 

had  their  roots  in  religious  soil;  have  grown  to 
maturity  under  the  tutelage  of  religious  motives 
and  restraints,  and,  only  at  the  stage  of  ma- 
turity, have  separated  from  the  parental  roof, 
and  entered  on  the  experiment  of  housekeeping 
for  themselves.  That  this  is  no  mere  accident, 
or  that  the  course  of  human  history  could  not 
have  been  different  is  beyond  question.  Fur- 
thermore, there  is  evidence  that  is  convincing  to 
the  effect  that  religion  is  so  closely  identified 
with  the  ground-springs  of  the  life  of  humanity 
that  it  is  a  necessary  source  of  power  and  inspi- 
ration for  the  achievement  of  its  best  results. 
The  proposition  is  not  without  verification  that 
neither  art,  nor  sociality,  nor  morality  can  sepa- 
rate itself  from  religion  or  repudiate  the  re- 
ligious motive,  without  losing  power  and  suffer- 
ing the  drying  up  of  inspiration.  The  great 
periods  in  art,  for  example,  have  been  the  relig- 
ious. Sociality,  also,  without  religion  is  doomed 
to  run  out  into  the  shallows  and  lose  much  of 
its  effectiveness  as  a  force  in  human  life.  These 
facts  have  a  vital  bearing  on  the  question  as  to 
the  relative  date  of  the  appearance  of  religion 
as  a  factor  in  human  experience.  Without 
mooting  the  perhaps  unanswerable  question  as 
to  the  priority  of  the  social  or  the  religious  in 
the  experience  of  the  individual  (and  there  is 
as  much  evidence  for  the  priority  of  the  relig- 
ious as  for  that  of  the  social),  it  will  be  evident 
that  the  considerations  we  have  already  brought 
out;  namely,  the  testimony  of  history  to  the 


20         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

parental  relation  of  religion  to  all  other  forms 
of  civilization;  the  testimony  of  experience  to 
the  fact  that  the  divorce  of  other  forms  from  re- 
ligion involves  a  loss  of  power  and  inspiration ; 
these,  it  need  not  be  urged,  have  an  important 
bearing  on  the  question  of  priority.  Besides, 
there  is  another  consideration  that  will  also 
have  a  bearing  on  the  question,  if  not  of  prior- 
ity in  time,  certainly  on  that  of  the  deeper  logi- 
cal priority  of  religion  to  other  factors  in  civi- 
lization. The  consideration  of  which  I  speak 
arises  out  of  the  existence  of  evil  in  the  world, 
and  the  exigency  which  its  existence  gives  rise 
to  in  the  life  of  the  individual  and  the  race.  No 
profound  insight  into  evil  can  be  reached  with- 
out leading  to  the  conviction  that  a  radical  cure 
of  evil  will  involve  more  than  the  mere  reform 
of  the  individual  or  society.  It  is  not  reform 
but  renewal;  the  organization  of  the  whole  of 
life  around  a  new  center,  that  is  the  funda- 
mental need  of  both  the  individual  and  society. 
Now,  it  is  clear  that  there  is  no  other  point  of 
view  than  that  of  religion  from  which  this  will 
be  apparent.  Furthermore,  there  is  no  other 
agency  outside  of  religion  which  is  in  possession 
of  that  whole  insight  into  reality,  that  will  en- 
able us  to  see  that  the  remedy,  to  be  effective, 
must  be  one  that  will  deal  radically  with  the 
whole  man,  seeking  to  deliver  him  from  his  evil 
self  and  make  him  fundamentally  a  new  crea- 
ture. In  short,  the  insight  of  religion  teaches 
the  need,  not  of  reform  or  betterment,  but  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         21 

salvation.  In  this  conclusion,  we  are  in  agree- 
ment with  all  thinkers  who  have  thought  deeply 
on  the  religious  problem.  This  consideration 
of  the  profound  relation  of  religion  to  the  life 
of  man  as  a  whole,  and  its  insight  into  the  radi- 
cal nature  of  the  remedy  of  evil  that  is  required, 
serves  to  reinforce  the  other  reasons  which  lead 
to  the  conclusion  that  religion,  as  a  factor  in 
the  life  of  the  race  not  only  antedates  in  time 
all  other  factors,  but  that,  logically,  it  bears  a 
deeper  and  more  radical  and  fundamental  rela- 
tion to  the  life  of  man  than  any  other  factor  in 
his  civilization. 

Having  determined  what  the  primary  datum 
of  the  religious  consciousness  is,  and  its  signifi- 
cance for  the  grounding  of  the  religious  type  of 
consciousness  and  experience,  the  next  point  we 
wish  to  consider  is  that  of  the  noetic  activity 
that  is  aroused  by  this  primary  datum  in  ex- 
perience. In  dealing  with  the  primary  datum, 
we  indicated  that  it  fixed  the  general  type  of 
the  religious  consciousness,  as  that  which  grows 
up  around  the  central  sense  of  a  transcendent 
being.  In  dealing  with  the  noetic  activity,  we 
are  concerned  not  only  with  the  further  defini- 
tion of  type,  but  also  with  the  method  by  which 
intelligible  categories  gather  around  this  type. 
We  saw,  in  treating  of  the  social  type,  that,  in 
determining  the  other  as  its  own  kind,  the  child 
performs,  largely  in  an  unconscious  and  instinc- 
tive way,  a  noetic  act  that  may  be  characterized 
as  finding  itself  or  its  own  in  the  life  of  another. 


22  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

Now,  it  would  be  a  cheap  sort  of  wit  for  one  to 
wax  humorous,  in  view  of  this  contention,  and 
exclaim,  *'how  absurd  to  imagine  that  the  child 
is  capable  of  carrying  through  such  an  erudite 
mental  process  as  you  have  described.  In  order 
to  do  so,  your  child  must  be  a  philosopher." 
But  it  ought  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the  deep- 
est things  are  hidden  in  the  simplest  experi- 
ences, and  that  the  ''flower  in  the  crannied 
wall ' '  conceals  in  its  life  many  things  that  baffle 
the  deepest  insight  of  the  philosopher.  We 
have  made  no  claim  for  the  child  that  will  not 
be  borne  out  by  a  genetic  study  of  its  experi- 
ence. 

Now,  applying  the  same  analytic  to  the  noetic 
activity  in  religion,  we  will  be  led  to  analogous 
conclusions.  Here,  however,  I  shall  task  your 
patience  a  little  further  by  asking  your  indul- 
gence while  I  spend  a  few  minutes  considering 
further  the  claim  that  the  religious  conscious- 
ness is  a  derivation  from  the  social.  If  this  be 
true,  then,  to  us  men,  God  can  never  be  so  near 
as  are  our  fellow-men.  There  will  always  be  an 
interval  that  will  be  spanned  by  the  link  of  the 
social.  But  this  would  involve  the  reversal  of 
what  must  be  true  if  the  consciousness  of  re- 
ligion is  at  all  true.  If  the  primary  datum  is 
not  misleading ;  if  the  transcendent  being  exists 
— then  that  being  is  more  intimately  related  to 
us  than  any  other.  If  God  exists ;  that  is,  if  He 
is  real  and  not  illusory.  He  is  "closer  than 
breathing:  nearer  than  hands  and  feet."    In- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         23 

stead  of  having  to  traverse  the  social  link  to 
get  to  Him,  He  is  closer  than  the  social,  and  we 
have  only  to  inner  ourselves  to  the  secret  hiding 
place  of  our  real  selves  in  order  to  find  our- 
selves in  His  presence.  The  theory  of  social 
derivation  is  a  species  of  deistic  separation, 
which  has  been  discredited  in  other  fields  of  re- 
ligious thought. 

Eeturning,  then,  to  the  problem  of  our  analy- 
tic, we  will  be  prepared  to  find,  in  the  noetic 
activity  of  the  religious  consciousness,  an  an- 
alogy to  that  of  the  social,  but  not  a  mere  dupli- 
cation of  it.  Like  the  consciousness  of  which  it 
is  the  organ,  it  will  manifest  differentia  that 
will  distinguish  it  from  the  social  activity. 
What,  then,  we  may  ask,  shall  we  take  as  the 
differentia  of  the  noetic  activity  of  the  religious 
consciousness ;  or,  if  you  like  to  call  it  so,  of  re- 
ligious perception?  This  differentia  will  reveal 
itself,  I  think,  if  we  translate  the  sense  of  the 
transcendent  being  into  the  ontological  sense  of 
ground.  Our  warrant  for  this  may  be  stated  as 
follows:  The  ontological  motive  [which  we 
have  treated  in  another  part  of  this  lecture], 
which  leads  the  mind  in  a  process  that  ends  in 
the  conception  of  ultimate  grounding,  is  on  its 
negative  or  privative  side,  the  sense  of  de- 
pendence arising  out  of  our  feeling  that  the  last 
secret  of  our  being  is  not  to  be  found  in  our- 
selves, but  that  it  must  be  sought  in  some  more 
self-sustaining  principle  of  reality  in  which  the 
primal  roots  of  our  existence  will  be  found. 


24  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

The  fact  that  this  motive  is  central  in  all  the  ac- 
tivities of  our  life  shows  how  fundamental  it 
is,  and  will  lead  us  to  seek  for  its  expression  in 
the  most  primary  experiences  of  our  nature. 
Now,  it  is  in  the  light  of  this  insight  that  I  have 
made  the  translation  above  proposed,  and  have 
identified  the  primary  sense  or  perception  of 
the  transcendent  being  with  the  sense  or  per- 
ception of  a  being  in  which  our  own  existence 
is  grounded.  This  translation  also  satisfies,  as 
no  other  can,  the  sense  of  closeness  and  inti- 
macy that  binds  the  soul  to  whatever  being  it 
may  call  God. 

The  conclusion  we  have  reached  here  will  be 
of  great  service  to  us  in  the  further  analysis  of 
the  noetic  activity  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness, for  it  will  safeguard  us  against  that  crude 
and  superficial  use  of  analogy  called  anthropo- 
morphism, into  which  so  many  religious  think- 
ers have  fallen  in  dealing  with  the  sources  of 
religious  ideas.  Defining  anthropomorphism  as 
an  abusive  and  uncritical  use  of  analogy,  it  will 
be  our  task,  in  the  next  lecture,  to  define  a  criti- 
cal conception  of  the  principle  and  to  determine 
the  nature  and  limits  of  its  use  as  a  principle  of 
religious  knowledge. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         25 

Lecture  II.     The  Problem  of  Religious 
Knowledge  (Continued.) 

In  the  last  lecture  we  characterized  anthropo- 
morphism as  a  crude  and  abusive  use  of  an- 
alogy, and  proposed,  in  another  lecture,  to  de- 
termine a  critical  and  adequate  conception  of 
the  same  principle.  To  this  task  we  now  pro- 
ceed. We  may  define  anthropomorphism  as 
the  tendency  to  conceive  the  nature  of  the 
transcendent  object  of  religion  in  unmodified 
terms  of  our  own  conscious  being.  The  God  of 
anthropomorphism  will,  therefore,  be  man  writ 
large,  a  being  with  the  magnified  intellect,  pas- 
sions and  will,  with  the  magnified  personality 
of  a  human  being.  Xenophanes,  the  critic  of  the 
old  Greek  theological  conceptions,  brought  out 
this  characteristic  weakness  of  anthropomorph- 
ism in  his  saying  that,  could  oxen  conceive  a 
God,  they  would  represent  Him  as  a  magnified 
ox.  What,  then,  is  wrong  with  anthropomorph- 
ism? The  answer  will,  I  think,  bring  out  two 
respects  in  which  it  fails:  One,  the  more  ob- 
vious, and  the  other  the  more  profound  and  sig- 
nificant. The  first  of  these  faults  is  what  we 
may  call  the  crudeness  and  indiscrimination  of 
its  use  of  the  human  analogy.  It  ascribes  the 
passions,  faults  and  limitations  of  humanity  to 
God,  as  well  as  its  nobler  and  more  rational 
qualities.  This  is  exemplified  in  the  lower 
forms  of  religion,  as  well  as  in  the  religious 
conceptions  of  the  child.     To  the  child,  God 


26         PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

will  be  the  human  father  it  knows,  magnified, 
and  possessing  all  the  characteristics  of  the  hu- 
man parent ;  or,  if  the  child  has  reflected  a  lit- 
tle, and  found  the  human  father  possessing 
some  faults,  its  conception  of  God  will  still  be 
of  the  purely  human  type,  from  which  these 
faults  have  been  purged.  Now,  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  argue  at  length,  in  order  to  convince  the 
man  of  the  present  day,  that  no  adequate  con- 
ception of  the  Divine  Being  is  possible  so  long 
as  we  adhere  to  the  unmodified  type  of  our  o^vn 
being,  even  in  its  most  exalted  form.  Anthropo- 
morphism only  needs  to  be  clearly  defined  in 
this  regard  in  order  to  be  condemned  as  inade- 
quate. The  second  and  more  erudite  fault  of 
anthropomorphism  lies  in  its  failure  to  appre- 
hend the  true  significance  of  the  fact  of  tran- 
scendence. Why,  we  may  ask,  could  the  vice  of 
anthropomorphism  not  be  cured  by  distinguish- 
ing critically  between  the  lower  and  the  higher 
attributes  of  man,  and  founding  our  analogies 
only  upon  the  essential  attributes  of  his  rational 
and  spiritual  being?  This,  we  must  admit, 
would  be  a  great  step  in  advance,  and  it,  no 
doubt,  represents  the  highest  point  of  much  of 
our  contemporary  religious  thinking.  But  we 
must  insist  that  this  leaves  the  more  subtle  form 
of  the  difficulty  untouched.  We  will  never  un- 
derstand the  real  import  of  transcendence  so 
long  as  we  conceive  it  in  a  purely  quantitative 
sense, — that  is,  so  long  as  we  simply  conceive 
God's  attributes  as  our  own  enlarged.     If  we 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         27 

simply  regard  God 's  thoughts  as  different  from 
ours  in  being  larger  intellections  of  the  same 
species,  we  will  not  be  in  the  way  of  forming  an 
adequate  conception.  The  same  will  be  true  of 
all  other  ascriptions,  as  of  knowledge,  wisdom, 
power,  goodness  and  rationality.  The  vice  here 
can  only  be  escaped  by  conceiving  transcen- 
dence in  the  qualitative  rather  than  the  quanti- 
tative sense.  Now,  I  do  not  wish  to  conceal  the 
fact  that  the  recognition  of  this  does  involve  a 
limitation  of  our  powers  of  knowledge.  If 
God's  thought  is  not  simply  our  thought  with 
the  plus  sign,  but  is,  in  some  way,  qualitatively 
unlike  our  thought,  then  there  will  be  a  mystery 
about  the  divine  thinking  that  will  be  impene- 
trable to  our  powers.  The  acceptance  of  the 
claim  that  the  transcendence  of  the  object  of 
religion  is  qualitative  rather  than  quantitative 
involves  the  final  surrender  of  the  Gnostic's 
claim  of  the  omniscience  of  human  reason.  God 
cannot  be  brought  onto  the  plane  of  the  tri- 
angle, and  made  the  object  of  a  definition  that 
will  enclose  its  object. 

Let  us  endeavor,  at  this  point,  to  grasp  the 
significance  of  the  step  we  have  taken  here.  If 
it  be  true  that  the  transcendence  of  the  divine 
object  is  qualitative  rather  than  quantitative, — 
that  God  is  different  from  man  in  kind  as  well 
as  in  degree,  it  follows  that  our  conceptions  of 
God  will  be  qualitatively  inadequate  to  fully 
grasp  Him ;  that  we  cannot  say  that  He  is  a  be- 
ing like  ourselves  without  qualification.    It  fol- 


28  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

lows  that,  when  we  ascribe  wisdom,  power  or 
love  to  Him,  we  do  so  with  the  recognition  that 
our  conceptions  of  wisdom,  power  or  love  are 
only  imperfect  lights;  only  imperfect  symbols 
that  give  an  intelligent  direction  to  our  think- 
ing, but  do  not  conduct  it  to  its  goal.  It  in- 
volves the  recognition  on  our  part  that  our 
highest  conceptions  are  but  approximations  to 
the  reality;  that  they  simply  express  the 
formula  of  the  curve  without  being  able  to  fol- 
low it  out  to  infinit}^ 

Should  anyone,  at  this  point,  object  that  this 
conclusion  lands  us  logically  in  the  camp  of  the 
agnostic,  I  will  ask  your  indulgence  for  a  para- 
graph or  two  on  this  point  before  proceeding 
with  the  main  line  of  the  discussion.  It  is  a  bad 
custom  of  many  religious  thinkers  to  regard  ag- 
nosticism as  an  altogether  reprehensible  re- 
sult of  wrong-headed  and  perverse  thinking. 
Now,  I  do  not  hold  any  brief  for  the  agnostic 
here,  but  I  wish  to  point  out  what  I  conceive  to 
be  the  grain  of  truth  in  his  position.  If  we  in- 
quire what  kind  of  thinking  it  was  from  which 
agnosticism  arose  as  a  reaction,  we  will  find  that 
it  was  the  type  fashionable  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  a  type  that  involved  the  infallibility  of 
the  human  reason  as  a  judge  of  all  truth.  We 
find  this  type  prevailing  not  only  in  the  camp 
of  the  unbelieving  rationalist,  but  also  in  that 
of  the  orthodox  believer.  The  agnostic  is  one 
who  repudiates  the  infallibility  of  reason,  but 
goes    farther   and   proclaims   its    absolute   in- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         29 

competence  in  the  field  of  transcendent  realities. 
The  highest  efforts  of  reason  are  only  pseudo- 
conceptions,  to  use  Herbert  Spencer's  phrase, 
and  leave  the  object  absolutely  untouched  and 
mysterious,  if  it  exist  at  all.  Now,  what  I  con- 
ceive to  be  the  modicum  of  truth  in  agnosticism 
is  its  denial  of  the  absolute  claims  which  ration- 
alism makes  in  behalf  of  reason.  The  agnostic 
says  to  the  rationalist:  ''Your  claim  that  rea- 
son is  able  to  grasp  and  define  all  truth  is  one 
that  cannot  be  maintained.  There  is  always 
something  that  transcends  your  highest  concep- 
tions. You  will  find  that  your  efforts  to  define 
the  object  you  call  God,  not  only  fail,  but  that 
they  contradict  each  other.  In  the  effort  to 
grasp  the  transcendent  in  its  conceptions,  rea- 
son falls  into  contradiction  with  itself.  This 
proves  conclusively  that  the  reason  of  man  has 
no  faculty  for  representing  the  transcendent  re- 
ality in  its  forms  of  thought. ' ' 

Admitting  here  that  the  plea  of  the  agnostic 
is  valid  against  the  extreme  position  of  the 
rationalist,  the  point  which  I  wish  to  make  here 
is  that  the  denial  of  the  infallibility  of  reason 
as  an  organ  of  truth  does  not  carry  with  it  the 
agnostic  claim  of  its  absolute  incompetence.  To 
confine  our  consideration  to  the  field  of  relig- 
ious conceptions,  when  we  affirm,  from  the  in- 
adequacy of  our  conceptions  to  grasp  and  de- 
fine the  transcendent,  their  absolute  incompe- 
tence to  determine  it  in  any  degree  or  sense, 
we  ordinarily  do  so  ostensibly  on  the  basis  of 


30  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  claim  that  the  finite  cannot  grasp  the  infi- 
nite. But  the  agnostic  conclusion  of  the  abso- 
lute incompetence  of  reason,  has  hidden  in  it 
the  subtle  assumption  that  there  is  no  intelligi- 
ble or  possible  link  between  the  finite  and  the 
infinite.  It  is  clear,  however,  that,  were  this 
the  case,  it  would  be  strictly  impossible  to  pass 
in  thought  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite.  In 
short,  it  would  be  impossible  for  the  finite  rea- 
son of  man  to  form  any  conception  of  the  in- 
finite. Such  a  conclusion  is  flatly  in  contradic- 
tion to  the  facts  of  experience.  The  fact  that 
we  not  only  conceive  the  infinite,  but  assert  it 
as  the  necessary  correlate  of  the  finite,  proves 
the  distinction  to  be  only  relative  and  not  ab- 
solute. We  will  detect  the  linkage,  I  think,  be- 
tween the  finite  and  the  infinite  if  we  take  two 
other  analogous  conceptions,  those  of  the  im- 
perfect and  the  perfect.  There  is  very  clearly 
a  link  between  the  concepts  of  the  imperfect  and 
the  perfect  of  such  a  character  that  the  concept 
of  the  imperfect  will  itself  suggest  that  of  the 
perfect.  Also  an  intelligent  insight  into  what 
constitutes  the  imperfection  of  the  one  will  give 
us  an  intelligible  conception  of  the  pathway 
along  which  perfection  is  to  be  sought.  This 
will  be  perfectly  consistent  with  the  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  perfection  is  beyond 
the  complete  grasp  of  the  human  reason.  For, 
admitting  this,  the  way  of  approximation  is  still 
open,  and  our  conceptions,  while  not  valid  as 
absolute  definitions,  will  be  valid  as  approxima- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         31 

tions.  They  will  serve  as  guide-boards  on  the 
way  to  the  goal  which  can  never  be  completely 
attained. 

Without  pursuing  this  line  any  further  at 
present,  let  us  return  to  the  main  thread  of  the 
argument.  We  had  reached  the  conclusion  in 
our  former  lecture  that  the  foundation  of  our 
religious  consciousness  is  the  sense  or  percep- 
tion of  the  presence  of  a  transcendent  object, 
and  that  this  perception,  coalescing  with  the 
ontological  motive  of  all  human  activity,  leads 
to  the  translation  of  this  primary  datum  into 
the  postulate  of  the  transcendent  being  as  the 
ground-spring  or  primary  root  of  our  existence. 
The  problem  then  was  by  what  process  does  the 
noetic  activity  further  define  this  ground-being  ? 
And  at  that  point  we  were  led  into  the  wide 
digression  which  we  have  made,  not  unprofit- 
ably,  I  may  hope,  in  our  criticism  of  anthropo- 
morphism. Returning  to  the  main  question,  we 
may  take,  as  the  outcome  of  our  discussion  up 
to  this  point,  the  conclusion  that,  at  the  basis 
of  our  religious  consciousness,  rests  the  postu- 
late of  the  transcendent  ground-spring  of  our 
existence.  This  is  deeper  than  analogy,  and  is 
a  deliverance  of  the  primary  motives  of  our 
nature.  Now,  it  is  when  we  inquire  what  form 
the  noetic  activity  takes  in  the  further  determi- 
nation of  our  religious  conceptions  that  we  come 
upon  the  place  and  function  of  analogy.  We  are 
able  here  to  distinguish  two  lines  of  funda- 
mental analogy.     (1)  The  analogy  of  type,  and 


32  PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION 

(2)  the  analogy  of  attribute.  In  both,  there  is 
involved  the  point  of  departure  from  our  o^vn 
self-hood  as  revealed  in  self-consciousness. 
Briefly  stated,  we  proceed  to  the  further  deter- 
mination of  the  primary  datum  of  religion  by 
the  employment  of  analogies  drawn  from  our 
own  self-tjTDe  of  reality.  It  is  important,  then, 
that  our  conception  of  self -hood,  the  form  of  be- 
ing revealed  in  self-consciousness,  should  be 
adequate.  "Without  going  into  details,  which 
will  be  reserved  for  a  subsequent  lecture,  let  me 
have  your  indulgence  while  I  make  a  condensed 
statement  of  what  I  believe  to  constitute  the 
outlines  of  an  adequate  conception  of  self.  We 
know  that  empiricism,  limiting  itself  to  the 
plural  world  of  phenomena,  is  able  to  find  in 
consciousness  only  the  existence  of  a  transient 
and  perishable  self.  There  are  states  of  unity, 
identity  and  perdurability,  it  is  true,  but  these 
are  states  among  other  states,  and  pass  in  the 
perpetual  flux  of  coming  into  and  passing  out 
of  existence.  But  empiricism  finds  only  a  pass- 
ing, unreal  self,  while  it  denies  the  existence  of 
a  real,  perdurable  self.  From  the  standpoint 
of  a  rational  self-consciousness,  however,  we 
are  led  to  distinguish  between  two  selves,  or, 
rather,  two  orders  of  self,  the  empirical,  which 
is  plural,  fragmentary  and  perishable,  and  the 
deeper,  real  or  rational  self  that  is  unitary, 
stable  and  perdurable.  A  deeper  criticism  of 
self-consciousness  always  reveals  this  real  self 
as  the  ground  and  ideal  of  the  empirical  self 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         33 

that  is  perishable.  Ontologically  viewed,  the 
life  of  the  subject  of  experience  may  be  repre- 
sented as  a  process  in  which  there  is  a  perpetual 
effort  to  pass  from  the  flux  and  transciency  of 
the  empirical  to  the  stability  and  unity  of  the 
real  and  rational.  The  real  self  is,  therefore, 
both  the  ground  of  the  empirical  self  and  its 
ontological  goal.  It  is  to  the  self,  viewed  from 
this  rational  and  ontological  point  of  view  as 
unitary,  stable,  unbroken  and  perdurable,  that 
we  apply  the  name  soul.  The  soul  may  then 
be  identified  with  the  real  self,  or  real  subject 
of  experience,  and  may  be  regarded  as  the  uni- 
tary and  perdurable  subject  which  maintains  its 
identity  in  and  through  the  flux  of  empirical 
change.  Now,  I  will  ask  you  to  let  this  brief 
characterization  serve  our  purposes  provision- 
ally at  this  stage  of  the  discussion.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  real  self,  the  whole  effort 
of  our  experience  is,  as  I  have  said,  to  find 
something  permanent,  stable  and  unitary  as  its 
ground.  This  being  true,  it  will  be  clear  that 
the  deepest  analogies  we  can  employ  will  be 
those  we  derive  from  the  conception  of  our  real 
and  deeper  selves,  and  these  I  propose  to  con- 
sider under  the  two  divisions  above  indicated. 

In  the  first  place,  how  does  the  analogy  of 
self  or  the  soul  enable  us  to  define,  in  any  sense, 
the  primary  being?  Well,  if  we  consider  that 
the  soul  stands  related  to  experience  as  its  uni- 
tary ground,  as  well  as  its  ontological  goal  or 
ideal,  we  have  the  deepest  reason  for  affirming 


34         PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

the  same  or  its  analogue  of  the  primary  and 
transcendent  spring  of  existence.  We  say,  us- 
ing this  deep  analogy,  that  the  primary  being  is 
the  unitary  ground  of  existence,  as  well  as  its 
ontological  goal.  We  say,  using  the  same  an- 
alogy, that  this  being  is  one  of  our  ovm  type; 
that  is,  of  the  soul-type ;  in  that,  we  assert  of  it 
the  same  relation  to  the  total  plurality  of  the 
phenomenal  world  that  we  assert  as  existing  be- 
tween the  soul  and  the  plurality  of  the  world  of 
consciousness.  Without  further  elaborating  the 
argument  here,  we  may  say  that  the  use  of  this 
analogy  enables  the  noetic  activity  to  define  the 
conception  of  a  being  that  is  generically  of 
the  same  type  as  the  soul  in  us.  But,  in  the  use 
of  this  analogy,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the 
ground-being  will,  by  virtue  of  its  transcend- 
ence, be  qualitatively  different,  in  some  sense, 
from  our  soul  type.  Can  we  determine  any 
sense  here  in  which  that  may  be  true?  Well,  if 
we  consider  the  soul  as  a  real  subject  of  ex- 
perience, we  will  find  that  the  notion  of  a  real 
subject  is  not  consistent  with  a  passive,  but 
only  with  an  active  agent.  If  so,  the  least,  and 
perhaps  the  most,  we  can  ascribe  to  it  is  what 
we  call  self-activity.  But  that  which  is  self- 
active  may  not  be  self -existent.  It  may  have  the 
principle  of  self-activity  in  it,  and  may  yet  be 
conscious  that  it  does  not  contain  the  ground  of 
its  own  existence.  This  will  enable  us  to  de- 
termine a  distinction, — for  the  transcendent  be- 
ing, as  the  ground  of  all  existence,  will  be  not 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         35 

only  self-active  but  self-existent,  and,  as  such, 
will  be  qualitatively  different  from  the  soul. 

Here,  I  apprehend,  we  have  come  upon  a 
matter  of  importance  for,  if  we  study  the  onto- 
logical  proof  of  God's  existence,  as  developed 
by  Anselm  and  adopted  by  Spinoza,  we  will  find 
that,  in  principle,  it  is  the  identification  of  God 
with  the  self-existent,  and  the  assertion  that  the 
existence  of  the  self -existent  is  self-evident.  It 
is  only  the  existence  of  derived  things  that 
needs  to  be  proved.  The  spring  of  all  existence 
exists  necessarily.  Analogy  enables  us,  then,  to 
ascribe  the  type  of  our  own  soul  to  the  tran- 
scendent being,  with  the  qualification  that  this 
being  is  not  simply  self-active  but  self-existent, 
containing  in  it  the  principle  of  all  existence. 

Our  second  point  involves  the  use  of  analogy 
in  the  field  of  the  attributes  of  this  being.  The 
first  group  of  attributes  we  will  consider  are 
what  have  been  called  metaphysical:  namely, 
the  attributes  of  infinitude,  absoluteness,  om- 
nipotence, omniscience,  omnipresence  and  etern- 
ity. Taking  these  attributes  as  a  whole,  I  think, 
when  we  affirmed  of  God  the  attribute  by  virtue 
of  which  He  transcends  man  in  existence,  we 
have  affirmed  the  principle  of  all  this  group  of 
attributes.  If  God  is  self-existent;  that  is,  if 
He  holds  the  springs  of  being  within  Himself, 
He  is  thereby  infinite,  free  from  finite  limits; 
absolute,  free  from  existential  dependence ;  om- 
nipotent, free  from  the  restrictions  of  derived 
existence;  omniscient,  that  is,  the  subject  of  a 


36  PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION 

knowledge  that  is  commensurate  with  all  ex- 
istence; omnipresent,  that  is,  present  to  all  re- 
ality by  virtue  of  being  the  principle  of  all  ex- 
istence ;  eternal,  by  virtue  of  His  self-existence, 
which  antedates  time  and  grounds  its  series. 
It  seems  to  be  quite  evident  that,  when  we  have 
once  grasped  the  true  principle  of  transcend- 
ence the  application  of  the  analogy  of  the  self 
to  the  ground-being  becomes  clear. 

Let  us,  then,  take  another  group  of  attributes, 
which  we  may  call  the  psychological.  The  re- 
ligious consciousness  persists  in  ascribing 
thought  and  feeling  and  will  to  God,  in  spite  of 
the  prohibition  of  Spinoza  and  other  great  phi- 
losophers, who  say  that  there  is  no  warrant  for 
saying  that  God  either  thinks  or  feels  or  wills 
in  any  sense  that  we  can  understand.  Have  we 
not  in  our  possession  a  key  that  will  open  the 
way  to  a  ray  of  light  on  this  situation  ?  If  God 
transcends  our  type  in  His  self-existence,  it  is 
clear  that  His  intellections,  as  well  as  His  feel- 
ings and  volitions,  if  we  suppose  Him  to  be  the 
subject  of  such  activities,  will  be  commensurate 
with  His  self-existence.  This  will  involve  two 
conclusions  regarding  all  these  activities.  They 
will  be  related  to  the  whole  of  existence,  and 
they  will  be  related  directly  and  immediately, 
since  the  principle  of  self-existence  will  be  pres- 
ent in  all  existence.  God's  thinking  will  be, 
therefore,  a  function  of  the  whole  of  reality;  it 
will  be  all-including.  The  Divine  intellection 
will  also  be  immediate.     Kant  has  the  same 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         37 

thought  in  mind  when  he  conceives  an  under- 
standing whose  conceptions  are  immediately 
perceptive  of  the  truth.  We  cannot,  he  says, 
determine  whether  such  an  understanding  ex- 
ists or  not.  But  its  possibility  cannot  be  de- 
nied, and,  could  we  pass  from  the  idea  of  God 
to  His  existence,  we  would  then  have  sufficient 
grounds  for  asserting  that  this  type  of  intellec- 
tion is  real.  The  reason,  then,  why  Kant  is  un- 
able to  assert  that  this  type  of  understanding  is 
real,  is  mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  is  forced 
to  leave  the  existence  of  God  in  doubt.  In  these 
discussions,  we  have  escaped  the  dilemma  of 
Kant  by  refusing  to  divorce  the  idea  of  God 
from  the  existential  grounds  out  of  which  it 
arises.  Taking  the  idea  of  a  perceptive  under- 
standing as  a  type  of  the  qualitative  difference 
that  must  be  recognized  as  existing  between  the 
divine  intellection  and  its  human  analogue,  the 
conclusion  will  be  obvious  that  both  gnosticism, 
which  assumes  the  unqualified  ability  of  the  hu- 
man reason  to  grasp  and  define  the  nature  of 
the  divine  intelligence;  and  agnosticism,  which 
asserts  the  total  inability  of  reason  to  form  any 
conceptions  of  the  divine,  are  alike  false; — the 
one  failing  to  realize  the  impossibility  of  form- 
ing an  intelligent  conception  of  self-existence, 
which  is,  nevertheless,  the  first  datum  of  all  ex- 
istence, and  thus  vitiating  all  its  conclusions; 
the  other  failing  to  recognize  the  ability  of  the 
human  reason  to  reach  approximate  conceptions 
of  the  divine  attributes,  which,  though  they  are 


38  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

inadequate,  point  the  way  toward  a  limiting 
ideal  and  render  its  nature  intelligible. 

The  last  group  of  qualities  we  shall  study 
brieliy  in  this  connection  are  the  moral,  the 
ascription  to  God  of  the  attributes  of  righteous- 
ness, holiness,  justice,  goodness  and  truthful- 
ness. We  will  find  that  the  ground  of  discrimi- 
nating judgment  here  is  the  same  as  above.  It 
is  not  worth  while  to  pause  on  the  question 
whether  the  conception  of  God  involves  moral 
attributes  or  not.  An  immediate  necessary  in- 
ference from  the  idea  of  God  is  that  He  is  good. 
This  springs  immediately  from  the  idea  of  per- 
fection involved  in  the  very  notion  of  God. 
But  there  is  a  still  further  reflection  that  is  not 
so  obvious.  The  idea  of  God,  we  have  said,  in- 
volves perfection,  and  the  idea  of  God,  as  main- 
tained above,  is  that  of  the  self-existent  ground 
of  all  existence.  The  perfection  of  things  will 
always  be  determined  in  the  light  of  their  first 
principle,  which  will  fix  their  ideal  limit.  Hence 
God,  as  the  self-existent  principle  of  all  exist- 
ence, will  contain,  in  His  own  nature,  the  ideal 
and  standard  of  perfection.  It  is  the  conception 
of  God  as  the  self-existent  principle  of  all  exist- 
ence that  involves  perfection  as  an  immediate 
necessity.  Applying  this  conclusion  to  the 
moral  attributes,  we  will  find  that  thev  must 
all  be  conceived  under  the  idea  of  perfection. 
This  will  involve  the  same  limits  as  above.  The 
righteousness,  holiness,  justice  and  truthfulness 
of  God  may  be  represented  intelligently  under 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         39 

the  analogies  of  our  own  corresponding  human 
attributes,  provided  we  take  our  highest  con- 
ceptions of  these  attributes  as  approximations 
which  give  us  intelligent  guidance,  but  never  en- 
able us  to  fully  grasp  the  ideal. 

We  have  now  proceeded  far  enough  to  enable 
us  to  draw  some  conclusions  in  regard  to  the 
ground  terms  of  religious  knowledge.  The  re- 
ligious consciousness,  in  common  with  all  pri- 
mary forms  of  consciousness,  gives  some  imme- 
diate deliverance,  which  serves  as  a  datum  for 
the  superstructure  which  the  noetic  faculty  pro- 
ceeds to  erect  upon  it.  We  have  seen  that  the 
primary  datum  of  the  religious  consciousness  is 
the  sense  or  perception  of  a  transcendent  pres- 
ence, which  the  noetic  faculty,  following  the 
ontological  motive  of  grounding,  translates  into 
the  notion  of  the  self-existent  ground  and 
spring  of  all  existence.  This  is  the  intuition 
out  of  which  springs  that  sense  of  dependence, 
the  feeling  that  he  is  not  self-existent,  but  has 
his  being  rooted  in  soil  deeper  than  his  own, 
which  is  so  fundamental  and  which  so  domi- 
nates his  religious  consciousness.  With  this 
perception  of  the  self-existent  ground  of  its  ex- 
istence as  a  primary  datum,  we  have  seen  how 
the  noetic  faculty,  proceeding,  not  from  any  an- 
alogy of  sense,  but  from  the  analogy  of  man's 
own  self-conscious  being,  as  revealed  by  the 
deeper  processes  of  his  consciousness,  defines 
this  primal  being  as  the  unitary,  stable  and  per- 
durable ground  of  all  existence.    In  other  words, 


40         PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

it  is  defined  in  terms  that  are  fundamental  to 
the  soul-type  of  self-conscious  being,  and  as  a 
being  of  the  same  type. 

At  this  point,  we  had  occasion  to  criticise  the 
tendency  of  anthropomorphism  to  represent 
this  being  as  such  a  being  as  ourselves  writ 
large,  and  the  refutation  of  anthropomorphism 
was  founded  on  the  claim  that  it  misinterpreted 
the  transcendence  of  this  being  as  being  only 
quantitative,  whereas  quantitative  transcend- 
ence has  no  significance  for  religion.  The  true 
sense  in  which  the  primal  being  transcends 
we  found  to  be  qualitative,  and  to  arise  out  of 
the  fact  that  the  ground-spring  of  existence  is 
self-existent.  This  qualitative  difference,  as 
we  saw,  lifts  the  ground-being  above  the  plane 
of  the  human  soul,  and  makes  it  impossible  to 
define  it  in  unmodified  categories  of  the  human 
type.  This,  as  we  saw,  gave  rise  to  the  issue 
between  gnosticism,  which  asserts  the  omni- 
science of  reason,  and  agnosticism,  which  af- 
firms its  total  incompetence  in  the  field  of  re- 
ligious conceptions.  We  met  this  issue  with  our 
doctrine  of  approximating  conceptions,  which, 
while  they  do  not  enable  us  to  fully  grasp  or 
define  the  transcendent  object,  yet  render  it  in- 
telligible, and  represent  the  true  pathway  to- 
ward the  ideal.  Finally,  we  have  seen  how  the 
qualitative  transcendence  of  the  ground-being, 
having  its  principle  in  the  self-existence  of  that 
being,  must  be  taken  into  consideration  in  shap- 
ing our  efforts  to  determine  the  attributes  of  the 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         41 

ground-being.  In  employing  our  own  funda- 
mental conceptions  of  the  attributes  of  being,  as 
ascriptions  to  the  divine  being,  we  have  found 
it  necessary,  in  all  cases,  to  take  into  account 
the  qualitative  transcendence  of  the  divine  na- 
ture, and  to  treat  our  conceptions  accordingly. 
We  proceed,  now,  to  another  phase  of  re- 
ligious knowledge,  which  arises  out  of  an  ap- 
parent conflict  of  opposite  tendencies  in  the  de- 
velopment of  religious  ideas.  We  have  seen 
that  two  forces  operate  in  determining  our  re- 
ligious conceptions,  and,  more  specifically,  our 
idea  of  God.  The  one  we  may  call  the  self- 
analogy,  which  acts  to  define  the  type  and  at- 
tributes of  God  in  terms  of  our  own  conscious 
being.  This  force,  acting  alone  and  unmodified, 
would  lead  to  the  extreme  of  anthropomorph- 
ism on  the  one  hand,  and  that  of  gnosticism  on 
the  other.  Proceeding  on  this  analogy  alone, 
God  would  be  completely  knowable  and  defin- 
able, either  in  the  lower  terms  of  anthropo- 
morphism, or  in  the  higher  terms  of  an  omnis- 
cient reason.  But  we  have  found  that  there  is 
another  and  more  subtle  force  which  acts  in  an 
opposite  way,  either  consciously  or  unconscious- 
ly, in  shaping  our  religious  conceptions.  This  is 
the  force  of  qualitative  transcendence,  which 
constrains  us  to  recognize  a  qualitative  differ- 
ence of  type  and  attribute,  and  apparently  un- 
does what  has  already  been  accomplished  by  the 
use  of  the  self -analogy.  Now,  the  sense  of  this 
opposition,  when  first  apprehended,  will,  with- 


42  PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION 

out  doubt,  put  the  thinker  into  a  sore  dilenuna. 
He  will  be  strongly  driven  to  commit  himself 
either  to  the  side  of  transcendence,  or  to  that 
of  the  self-analogy,  and,  in  either  case,  will 
manifest  a  characteristic  tendency  in  the  field 
of  religious  thought.  If  the  moment  of  tran- 
scendence fertilizes  in  his  mind,  he  will  become 
a  partisan  of  the  Eleatic  gnostic,  who  puts  God 
so  far  removed  from  the  world  of  plurality  and 
change,  that  He  is  virtually  isolated  and  lost 
in  His  unapproachable  oneness  and  immutabil- 
ity. It  is  only  a  short  step  from  this  conclusion 
to  the  modern  Spencerian  type  of  agnosticism 
that  denies  the  power  of  reason  to  conceive  such 
a  being,  and  hides  it  absolutely  behind  the  veil 
of  mystery.  If,  however,  it  is  the  self -analogy 
that  fertilizes  in  our  thinking,  the  sense  of 
transcendence  will  fall  into  the  background, 
and  we  will  seem  to  be  in  possession  of  a  prin- 
ciple which  renders  God  intelligible  to  us,  but 
one  that  stamps  our  categories  as  adequate  and 
our  reason  as  competent  to  grasp  God  in  our 
definitions,  and  reduce  His  nature  to  terms  as 
definite  as  those  of  mathematics.  Anthropo- 
morphism and  dogmatic  rationalism  have  a 
very  close  kinship  and  agree  in  asserting  the 
self-sufi&ciency  of  their  own  categories  to  de- 
termine the  idea  of  God.  But  the  history  of 
thought  teaches  us  that  dogmatic  rationalism 
will  meet  criticism  in  the  way,  which  will  con- 
vict it  of  transgressing  the  limits  of  a  possible 
knowledge  and  working  out  formal  demonstra- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         43 

tions  that  have  no  sound  major  premises ;  while 
the  lion  in  the  way  that  will  confound  anthropo- 
morphism is  humanism,  which  will  convict  it 
of  the  employment  of  purely  human  data  to 
prove  a  super-human  conclusion.  For  human- 
ism is  the  logical  outcome  of  anthropomorph- 
ism, and  follows  strictly  from  the  terms  of  the 
anthropomorphic  logic. 

Truly,  the  thought  of  man  is  thrown  into  a 
painful  dilemma  by  this  conflict  of  opposite 
principles,  neither  of  which  he  can  repudiate 
or  neglect  without  following  into  extravagance. 
Now,  the  real  solution  of  the  dilemma  is  to  be 
found,  I  think,  in  recognizing  the  fact  that  we 
have  come  upon  a  dialectic  of  principles,  which, 
when  apart  and  unqualified,  tend  to  contradic- 
tion and  paradoxes,  but,  when  kept  together  in 
the  relation  of  mutual  qualification,  give  rise  to 
true  and  consistent  conclusions.  Let  us  con- 
sider, then,  how  the  dialectic  will  operate  in  the 
genesis  of  true  conceptions.  Take,  for  example, 
the  ascription  of  moral  attributes  to  God.  The 
difficulty  here  consists  in  the  fact  that  we  do 
not  understand  how  morality  can  be  ascribed  to 
a  being  without  subjecting  him  consciously  to 
moral  law.  But  this  would  make  something 
else  more  primary  than  God,  who  would  thus 
become  a  dependent  being.  The  opposing  prop- 
ositions which  arise  are  (1)  that  God  is  not  a 
moral  being;  (2)  that  He  is  moral  and  depend- 
ent, or  subject  to  law.  This  is  a  sore  dilemma 
from  which  thought  has  not  been  completely  de- 


44  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

livered  from  Plato's  time  down  to  the  present 
day.  But  is  there  no  way  out  of  it  ?  The  dialec- 
tic will  give  us,  at  least,  some  help,  and  we  may, 
perhaps,  get  a  hint  from  Kant's  perceptive  un- 
derstanding. If  we  regard  the  opposition  as  a 
real  dialectic,  how  will  it  help  our  difficulty  ?  In 
this  way;  while  we  regard  our  principles  as 
operating  on  the  same  plane,  they  will  be  in 
contradiction ;  whereas,  if  we  do  not  proceed  on 
this  assumption,  but  recognize  the  possibility 
that  we  may  be  dealing  with  conceptions  which 
belong  to  different  levels,  a  way  out  of  the  di- 
lemma may  appear.  Now,  if  we  scrutinize  the 
two  principles,  that  of  transcendence  and  that 
of  self -analogy,  we  will  find  reasons  for  regard- 
ing the  principle  of  transcendence  as  occupying 
the  higher  level.  The  principle  of  self-analogy 
is  clearly  on  our  human  level ;  but  transcendence 
is  a  category  of  the  self-existent,  and  is,  there- 
fore, above  us.  Naturally,  then,  in  a  dialectic, 
the  higher  will  be  the  checking  principle  of  the 
lower.  To  return  to  our  example,  the  ascription 
of  moral  attributes  to  God:  the  principle  of 
self-analogy  will  lead  us  to  ascribe  morality  to 
God,  but  here  we  come  on  the  difficulty  that,  if 
we  ascribe  the  type  of  our  human  morality  to 
God,  we  bring  Him  under  law,  and  there  is 
something  more  ultimate  than  Himself.  Shall 
we  say,  then,  that  God  is  not  moral!  The  prin- 
ciple of  transcendence  would  seem  to  suggest  a 
better  way.  Being  a  principle  on  a  higher  level, 
it   is   not   in   contradiction   with   self-analogy. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         45 

Rather  it  is  a  principle  of  delimitation,  and  the 
kind  of  delimitation  it  enforces  will  only  appear 
in  the  light  of  the  specific  character  of  the  prin- 
ciple itself.  Now,  we  have  already  concluded 
that  the  root-notion  of  transcendence  in  this  re- 
gard is  self-existence.  God  transcends  the  soul 
of  man  by  virtue  of  his  self -existence,  and  this 
means  that  he  has  the  first  roots  of  existence  in 
himself.  Applying  this  to  the  case  in  hand,  we 
will  get  a  hint  of  where  the  difficulty  lies.  We 
were  not  troubled  by  the  ascription  of  morality 
to  God,  for  to  deny  Him  morality  would  seem  to 
be  a  privation ;  but  what  did  trouble  us  was  its 
seeming  implication  of  the  divine  subordination 
to  law.  But  the  transcendence  of  God  implies 
His  antecedence  to  law;  that,  as  the  self-exist- 
ent, the  springs  of  law  are  in  His  own  being. 
If  we  ascribe  morality  to  God,  we  must,  there- 
fore, do  it  in  the  transcendent  sense,  which  will 
enable  Him  to  be  moral  without  being  con- 
sciously subject  to  law.  Is  this  at  all  thinkable  I 
It  is  here,  I  think,  that  Kant's  suggestion  of  a 
perceptive  understanding  will  give  us  a  hint. 
Kant  meant,  by  a  perceptive  understanding,  one 
that,  like  perception,  will  constitute  its  object 
or  content  immediately,  and  not  by  a  mediate 
process.  This  must  be  the  sense  of  Spinoza 
when  he  regards  thought  as  perceptive.  In 
other  words,  what  Kant  and  Spinoza  mean  to  do 
is  to  ascribe  the  creative  function  to  the  under- 
standing ;  the  power  to  create  the  objects  of  its 
own  intellection.    Applying  this  insight  to  the 


46         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

case  in  hand,  if  we  ascribe  morality  to  God,  we 
must  do  so  creatively.  God  will  be  the  prime 
author  of  the  moral,  and  it  will  exist  because  it 
has  its  first-springs  in  His  nature. 

What,  now,  would  be  the  consciousness  of 
such  a  being  in  connection  with  his  own  activi- 
ties, either  intellectual  or  moral?  Would  it  be 
that  of  a  being  who  is  consciously  related  to 
that  which,  in  its  roots,  transcends  Him,  and 
to  which  He  is  subjected  in  the  sense  of  law? 
Or,  would  it  be  the  relation  of  free  creativeness, 
in  which  the  dominating  consciousness  is  that 
of  authorship,  and  not  of  law  or  dependence? 
Very  clearly,  the  latter. 

We  have  here  come  upon  the  terms,  as  I 
think,  for  the  solution  of  our  dilemma.  The 
dialectic  will  operate  in  this  way.  It  will  say, 
in  its  moment  of  transcendence:  You  cannot 
ascribe  morality  to  God  in  the  ordinary  sense, 
for  that  would  subordinate  Him  to  law ;  but  He 
is  self-existent  and  is  the  source  of  all  law. 
You  must,  therefore,  modify  your  conception  of 
the  moral,  and  conceive  it  as  related  to  a  con- 
sciousness of  free  creativeness,  in  which  the 
thought  of  the  right  or  true  does  not  bring  its 
author  consciously  into  subordination  to  the  law 
of  something  that  is  objective  to  him,  but  is, 
rather,  creative  of  the  right  or  true.  That  the 
divine  thinking  is  creative ;  that  the  divine  will- 
ing is  constitutive, — this  is  the  requirement  of 
the  principle  of  transcendence,  and  the  dialectic 
will  work  out  in  the  following  manner.    When 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION         47 

we  represent  God  as  moral,  following  the  an- 
alogies of  our  own  being,  the  other  term  of  the 
dialectic  will  lead  us  to  qualify  this  judgment 
with  the  touch  of  transcendence,  so  that  we  will 
be  led  to  admit  that  the  morality  of  the  divine 
nature  cannot  be  altogether  like  our  own,  which 
subordinates  us  to  law.  It  must,  rather,  be  that 
of  a  free,  creative  being,  whose  nature  is  its 
prime  source,  and  whose  thought  creates  the 
moral  law  of  which  he  thinks.  Whether  this  can 
be  made  wholly  intelligible  or  not  is  a  problem 
to  which  we  will  be  led  to  answer  both  yes  and 
no :  No,  if,  by  wholly  intelligible,  is  meant  that 
our  categories  are  adequate,  and  enable  us  to 
fully  grasp  the  conception  of  creative  morality ; 
for  it  is  clear  that  we  are  here  dealing  with 
terms  that  are  above  us;  but  yes,  if  we  mean 
that  under  the  stimulus  of  the  sense  of  tran- 
scendence itself  we  may  qualify  our  concep- 
tions, and  treat  them  as  merely  approximations. 
"We  will  learn  the  lesson  that  things,  in  order  to 
be  intelligible,  do  not  require  to  be  wholly 
graspable  or  definable;  otherwise,  our  knowl- 
edge would  be  much  more  limited  than  it  is. 
But,  in  the  field  of  religious  ideas,  we  have 
learned  that,  although  our  reason  must  abdicate 
its  claim  to  omniscience  and  full  competence, 
yet  it  is  possible  for  us,  by  the  use  of  our  con- 
ceptions, as  terms  of  approximation,  to  render 
intelligible  that  which,  nevertheless,  transcends 
our  powers  to  fully  grasp  or  define.  In  this  we 
express,  I  think,  the  truth  of  our  most  adequate, 


48         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

as  well  as  our  most  reverent,  religious  con- 
sciousness, which  is  not  willing  to  surrender 
the  claim  that  we  may  know  God  in  an  intimate 
way,  while,  at  the  same  time,  it  would  regard  as 
a  kind  of  blasphemy  the  claim  that  He  may  be 
brought  completely  within  the  limits  of  human 
thought.  Mystery  is  a  necessary  factor  in  a 
true,  religious  experience. 

Lecture  III.    The  Rational  Type  of  Religious 

Knowledge 

Before  entering  on  the  principal  topic  of  this 
lecture,  which  is  a  critical  treatment  of  the 
rational  type  of  religious  knowledge,  I  wish  to 
draw  a  deduction  or  two  from  the  conclusions 
we  have  already  reached.  We  saw  how  the  de- 
velopment of  true  and  adequate  conceptions  in 
religion  involves  the  exercise  of  a  dialectic  by 
which  opposing  principles  modify  each  other  in 
bringing  about  satisfactory  results.  I  propose 
to  show,  in  the  beginning  of  this  lecture,  the 
v^alue  of  the  dialectic  in  criticising  certain  laws 
that  have  been  proposed  as  expressing  the  real 
tendency  of  history  in  the  development  of  re- 
ligious conceptions.  One  of  these  laws  is  that 
laid  down  by  Herbert  Spencer.  We  find  the 
data  for  his  law  in  his  procedure  in  the  philos- 
ophy of  the  unknowable.  Quoting,  with  ap- 
proval, the  reasonings  of  Sir  William  Hamilton 
and  Dean  Mansel,  to  the  effect  that  the  idea  of 
God  is  one  that  altogether  transcends  the  con- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         49 

ceptions  of  men ;  that,  therefore,  human  reason 
is  wholly  incompetent  to  form  any  true  concep- 
tions of  God,  Mr.  Spencer  adduces  additional 
reasons  of  his  own  for  accepting  the  doctrine 
of  nescience.  The  peculiarity  of  his  doctrine  is 
that  he  affirms  dogmatically  the  existence  of  the 
transcendent  reality  while  maintaining  that  its 
nature  is  wholly  beyond  knowledge.  This  he 
regards  as  a  common  deliverance  of  both 
science  and  religion,  and  he  puts  forth  the  dog- 
ma of  the  existence  of  an  unknowable  power  as 
the  ground  of  reconciliation  between  science 
and  religion.  Now,  on  this  basis,  Mr.  Spencer 
is  able  to  see  that  the  tendency  of  human  think- 
ing from  the  beginning  has  been  to  pass  from  a 
stage  in  which  God  has  been  altogether  clothed 
in  the  attributes  of  man  to  an  ideal  stage  in 
which  he  is  regarded  as  wholly  transcendent 
and  drops  into  absolute  mystery.  Logically 
and  historically,  the  passage  is  from  crude 
anthropomorphism  to  pure  transcendence,  the 
process  being  characterized  as  the  gradual 
stripping  off  of  human  attributes  till  nothing 
remains,  and  reason,  recognizing  its  incompe- 
tence, gives  up  the  attempt  to  characterize  and 
restrain  negation.  This  is  the  single  law  which 
Mr.  Spencer  regards  as  valid  in  the  field  of  the 
development  of  religious  ideas.  At  the  oppo- 
site end  of  the  scale,  we  find  the  position  of  the 
humanists,  who  deny  all  transcendence  and 
supernaturalism,  and  seek  to  reduce  religion  to 
purely  human  and  knowable  terms.    We  may 


50  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

take  Auguste  Comte  as  the  classic  representa- 
tive of  humanism.  The  foundation  of  his  re- 
ligious philosophy  is  to  be  found  in  his  doctrine 
of  the  law  of  the  three  stages  in  the  develop- 
ment of  human  conceptions;  the  religious,  the 
metaphysical  and  the  scientific.  Comte  sees  the 
race  passing  through  the  three  stages  of  mental 
gro^vth,  beginning  with  the  lowest  stage,  the 
religious,  when  man  peopled  the  world  with 
superior  beings  like  himself;  passing  on  to  the 
metaphysical,  in  which  the  place  of  these  beings 
is  taken  by  occult  and  abstract  entities,  like  that 
of  substance;  to  a  final  stage,  called  the  scien- 
tific, in  which  the  place  of  the  religious  and 
metaphysical  entities  is  taken  by  the  notions  of 
natural  causation  and  scientific  law.  This,  to 
Comte,  is  the  final  stage,  and  the  only  one  that 
represents  the  truth.  It  might  be  supposed 
that,  having  reached  this  conclusion,  Comte 
would  propose  the  abolition  of  religion,  but  he 
pursues  a  more  logical  and  rational  method. 
He  proposes  to  preserve  religion,  but  to  erect 
it  on  scientific  foundations.  Now,  two  ways  are 
open  to  such  a  project,  either  that  of  naturalism 
or  that  of  humanism.  But  Comte,  being  most 
vitally  interested  in  the  social  sciences,  natur- 
ally chose  the  alternative  of  humanism.  We  are 
not  interested  here  in  the  details  of  Comte 's 
system,  but  only  in  the  principle  on  which  it  was 
founded.  The  scientific  conception  of  religion 
commits  it  to  a  knowable  and  verifiable  founda- 
tion,  and  eliminates   all  ideas   of  the   super- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         51 

natural  or  the  transcendent.  The  idea  of  man 
and  his  destiny  must,  therefore,  be  taken  as  the 
central  object  of  religion.  Humanism,  as  a  re- 
ligion, will  involve  the  worship  of  this  ideal  of 
humanity,  which  may  be  symbolized  as  Comte 
symbolized  it,  or  left  without  any  symbol.  The 
principle  is  that  of  pure  humanism,  and  has  in 
it  the  logical  denial  of  transcendence  in  its 
roots.  Now,  it  is  quite  clear  that  the  Spencer- 
ian  law  and  that  of  Comte  in  Humanism  are 
contradictory.  Standing  as  they  do  in  hostile 
opposition,  they  put  reason  in  a  dilemma,  and 
the  truth  of  one  involves  the  falsehood  of  the 
other,  yet  it  is  clear  that  neither,  standing  alone, 
expresses  the  full  truth  of  the  situation.  Each 
seems  to  require  the  checking  and  limiting  in- 
fluence of  the  other  in  order  to  check  erratic 
tendencies.  That  Spencer's  law  requires  modi- 
fication is  evident  not  only  from  the  refusal  of 
reason  to  accept  absolute  mystery  as  a  finality, 
but  also,  and  this  is  the  more  significant  con- 
sideration, because  it  is  logically  impossible  that 
an  existential  judgment  should  assert  nothing 
but  abstract  existence.  The  that  and  the  what 
of  things  are  strictly  not  separable,  and  Mr. 
Spencer  proves  this  in  his  effort  to  purge  his 
judgment  of  the  existence  of  the  ultimate  power 
from  any  kind  of  characterization.  In  fact, 
when  we  come  to  analyze,  we  stir  up  a  whole 
nest  of  qualifications,  which  come  in  unavoid- 
ably with  the  judgment  of  existence.  I  shall  not 
delay  you  in  pointing  out  any  of  these  since 


52         PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

they  are  not  in  dispute,  but  will  take  them  as 
evidence  of  the  impossibility  of  separating  ex- 
istence from  nature.    If  we  know  the  existence 
of  something,  we  have  some  knowledge  of  its 
kind.    The  law  is,  therefore,  fallacious  in  so  far 
as  it  asserts  a  tendency  toward  absolute  mys- 
tery.    Turning  to  the  law  of  humanism,   we 
find  it  open  to  the  same  criticism  on  the  oppo- 
site side.    The  dilemma  here  arises  from  the  at- 
tempt to  exclude  transcendence  in  a  judgment 
that  is  strictly  human  in  its  scope  and  limita- 
tions.   It  is  as  though  a  rope  that  is  ten  feet 
long  should  assert  that  there  is  nothing  beyond 
the    ten-foot    limit,    on    the    ground    that    its 
measuring  limit  is  ten  feet.    It  forgets  that  its 
ability  to  determine  the  limits  of  its  own  meas- 
uring power  depends  on  its  possession  of  a 
standard  of  measurement  that  transcends  its 
own  limits.    In  other  words,  the  logic  of  reason 
is  such  that  a  boundary,  in  order  to  be  fixed  as 
a  fact  of  knowledge,  must  be  overleaped  and 
viewed  from  the  other  side.    All  limitation  is, 
therefore,  relative,  and  the  Comptean,  in  order 
to  restrict  the  intelligence  of  man  to  purely  hu- 
manistic   boundaries,    must    appeal    to    trans- 
cendence as  a  necessary  datum  of  his  judgment. 
It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  the  attempt  to  elimi- 
nate   the    datum   of   transcendence    absolutely 
from  our  judgments  of  limitation,  involves  a 
subtle  self-contradiction  and  is  unsound.     The 
exclusion  is  relative  only  and  presupposes  a 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         53 

larger  insight  that  reality  flows  out  and  beyond 
the  arresting  points  of  all  our  judgments. 

The  conclusion  of  this  critical  analysis  will 
make  it  clear,  I  think,  that  neither  of  these  so- 
called  laws,  taken  in  its  abstract  independence, 
expresses  for  us  a  true  principle  in  the  develop- 
ment of  religious  ideas.  That  either  law 
should  work  out  true  results,  it  must  be  checked 
by  its  opposite.  The  true  and  adequate  con- 
ception of  the  logic  that  avoids  contradictions 
and  obtains  rational  results,  is  that  of  a  dia- 
lectic of  opposites,  such  as  we  have  described, 
in  which  the  unchartered  opposition  of  one- 
sided forces  is  overcome,  and  the  unchecked  ten- 
dencies of  pure  humanism  are  qualified  by  the 
insight  of  transcendence,  while,  reciprocally, 
the  tendency  of  transcendence  to  break  with 
the  boundaries  of  the  finite,  is  checked  by  the 
insight  of  humanism.  The  principle  of  the  dia- 
lectic supplies,  therefore,  a  more  adequate  and 
rational  law  of  the  development  of  religious 
ideas  that  is  exemplified  by  the  real  history  of 
religions.  We  do  not  find  in  the  highest  relig- 
ions, like  Judaism  and  Christianity,  that  the 
tendency  is  to  magnify  either  the  principle  of 
transcendence  or  that  of  self-analogy  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  the  other.  On  the  contrary,  we  find 
in  them  a  clearer  movement  of  the  dialectic, 
and  a  higher  and  purer  exhibition  of  both  prin- 
ciples, than  in  any  of  the  lower  types  of  re- 
ligion. 

We  pass,  now,  to  the  consideration  of  the 


54         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

mediate  and  rational  type  of  religious  knowl- 
edge. Now,  in  distinguishing  between  the  im- 
mediate and  the  mediate  forms  of  religious 
knowledge,  I  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  as 
claiming  that  the  two  are  separable.  In  fact, 
they  are  not,  and  the  noetic  activity  will  reveal 
in  its  earliest  and  most  elementary  movements, 
the  germs  of  mediation.  The  distinction  is 
largely  one  of  aspects,  and,  in  fact,  there  is  no 
stage  of  mentality  in  which  an  absolute  separa- 
tion is  possible.  But  while,  heretofore,  the 
emphasis  has  been  placed  on  processes  which 
are  dominantly  immediate,  we  are  about  to  shift 
the  scene  and  invite  you  to  the  study  of  an 
aspect  of  religious  knowledge  that  is  dominant- 
ly mediate.  I  will  designate  this  aspect  as  the 
ideo-rational ;  as  that  aspect  of  knowledge  in 
which  reason  performs  its  most  characteristic 
function.  Before  proceeding,  however,  it  is  im- 
portant, in  the  interest  of  clarity,  that  we 
should  point  out  one  or  two  distinctions.  You 
have  heard  of  the  distinction  between  two 
phases  of  reason,  which  are  called  abstract  and 
concrete,  and  you  are,  no  doubt,  not  unfamiliar 
with  the  fact  that,  in  some  quarters,  a  fashion 
has  sprung  up  of  speaking  of  the  abstract  rea- 
son with  a  certain  disrespect.  Now,  while  I, 
myself,  do  not  share  in  this  disrespect,  it  is  my 
purpose  here  to  draw  the  distinction  in  order 
that  I  may  make  my  appeal  to  the  concrete  rea- 
son. What  we  mean  by  the  abstract  reason, 
when  we  speak  with  discrimination,  is  reason  in 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         55 

its  formal  activity,  as  it  expresses  itself  in  the 
logical  processes.  This  activity  is  most  clearly 
revealed  in  judgments  and  inferences.  A  judg- 
ment is,  briefly,  a  device  by  which  we  think  two 
contents  of  our  world  together  that  were,  here- 
tofore, disjoined,  in  the  relation  of  subject  and 
predicate,  so  that  the  matter  of  the  predication 
becomes  a  qualifier  of  the  subject.  What  we 
call  inference  is  simply  an  extension  of  this 
thinking  together  process  beyond  the  limit  of 
single  judgments.  This  inferential  process  may 
be  either  immediate  or  mediate,  as,  when  we 
infer  from  the  judgment  John  Smith  is  honest, 
that  John  Smith  is  not  a  rascal.  This  would 
represent  the  immediate  form.  But,  if  the  ques- 
tion be  whether  John  Smith  be  a  cultivated  man 
or  not,  then,  without  the  means  of  testing  the 
question  directly,  if  we  happen  to  know  that 
John  Smith  has  had  a  college  education,  then 
we  argue,  mediately,  that  John  Smith  hav- 
ing enjoyed  the  advantages  of  a  college  edu- 
cation is  a  cultivated  man.  Here  our  inference 
takes  the  technical  form  of  the  syllogism  in 
which  our  major  premise  is  that  a  college- 
educated  man  is  a  cultivated  man.  Using  the 
mediating  term,  college-educated,  we  are  able 
to  so  connect  Smith's  case  with  the  major  that 
the  conclusion  follows  as  a  third  judgment. 
Stated  this  way,  it  will  be  clear  that  what  we 
call  the  formal  or  abstract  activity  of  reason 
does  not  deserve  our  reprobation,  but  is  nearly 
as  close  to  us  as  breathing,  and  forms  the  hands 
and  feet  of  our  intellectual  processes.     It  is 


56         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

hardly  deserving  of  the  epithet  abstract.  What 
I  call  the  concrete  reason  is  not  something  dif- 
ferent from  this  and  separable  from  it,  but, 
rather,  the  same  activity  viewed  in  the  light  of 
its  inner,  and  what  I  have  already  called  its  on- 
tological  motive.  Let  us  consider,  a  little  fur- 
ther, the  activity  on  its  formal  side.  In  this 
aspect,  as  a  thinking  together  part  of  a  world 
of  content  that  is  as  yet  separate  and  plural- 
istic, it  is  a  movement  that  seeks  to  remedy  the 
detachment  and  plurality  of  its  world  by  bring- 
ing the  fragments  together  into  a  unity.  It 
does  this  by  means  of  a  common  quality  in  the 
two  contents  of  a  judgment ;  by  means  of  a  com- 
mon or  mediating  term  in  the  case  of  mediate 
inference.  This  common  term  or  linkage  is  the 
principle  by  which  reason  organizes  the  parts 
of  its  world  into  a  unity.  It  is  by  this  means 
that  it  overcomes  the  immediated  plurality  of 
the  materials  with  which  it  deals;  by  which  it 
cures  the  instability  of  the  parts  by  introducing 
stability;  by  which  it  overcomes  the  perisha- 
bility of  passing  and  disconnected  phenomena 
by  fixing  them  in  an  order  that  is  unbroken  and 
permanent.  On  its  formal  side  then,  we  find 
that  reason  is  a  principle  that  organizes  the 
plural  and  disconnected  elements  of  its  world 
into  an  organized  order  and  unity.  This  formal 
aspect  of  reason,  however,  while  it  may  be  con- 
sidered abstractly,  is  not  separable  from  a 
deeper  and  more  hidden  aspect  by  which  it  is 
related  to  the  foundations  of  reality.    We  are 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         57 

indebted  for  this   insight  to   the   philosopher 
Leibnitz,  who  distinguished  the  formal  aspect 
of  reason  and  its  principle  of  contradiction;  or, 
in  the  reformed  logic  which  he  proposed,  iden- 
tity, from  its  more  fundamental  and  real  as- 
pect, the  principle  of  which  he  characterized  as 
that  of  ground  and  consequent.     This  was  a 
fertile   distinction,   which   was   overlooked   by 
Leibnitz'  successors,  and  led  to  the  attempt  to 
regard  the  formal  activity  of  reason  and  its 
principle  of  identity  as  constituting  its  whole 
legitimate  use.    The  result  was  the  drying  up  of 
the  springs  of  living  knowledge,  and  the  per- 
version of  philosophy  into  a  species  of  formal 
and  dogmatic  rationalism,  which  found  its  ne- 
mesis in  a  desert  of  arid  abstractions  and  pure- 
ly formalistic  demonstrations.     Dogmatic  ra- 
tionalism may  be  taken  as  the  inevitable  type 
of  philosophy,  which  will  result  from  the  ele- 
vation of  the  formal  principle  of  reason  into  the 
sole  organ  of  thought.     If  we  ask,  now,  what 
deeper  and  more  adequate  conception  of  reason 
is  possible,  we  may  appeal  to  Leibnitz  for  our 
answer.    Leibnitz  saw  clearly  that,  if  we  regard 
reason  as  a  purely  formal  activity,  it  will  cease 
to  be  an  organ  of  truth,  and  we  will  be  commit- 
ted to  some  empirical  principle  for  the  fruitful 
increase  of  knowledge.    But  empiricism,  in  its 
scepticism  of  reason,  and  its  exclusive  adhesion 
to  sense,  falls  into  blindness,  as  Hume  showed 
later,  and  loses  itself  in  a  morass.     The  only 
means   of  vindicating  reason   from   empirical 
scepticism,  and  of  making  it  a  real  organ  of 


58         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

truth,  was,  in  Liebnitz's  view,  to  claim  for  it 
a  deeper  function  than  the  formal,  and  a  princi- 
ple that  would  be  synthetic  rather  than  purely 
analytic.  It  has  not  been  sufficiently  recognized 
that  Leibnitz  has  here  anticipated  the  famous 
distinction  of  Kant,  although  it  did  not,  in  his 
case,  lead  on  to  the  discovery  of  the  categories. 
The  principle  of  the  deeper  and  more  concrete 
exercise  of  reason,  Leibnitz  finds  in  the  notion 
of  ground  and  consequent.  To  state  the  matter 
in  a  form  that  will  bring  out  the  Leibnitzian  in- 
sight, the  formal  activity  of  reason  is  super- 
ficial, and,  when  abstracted  from  its  deeper  mo- 
tive, ceases  to  be  an  organ  of  knowledge.  But 
this  separation  should  not  be  made  since  the 
formal  activity  can  be  kept  in  vital  touch  with 
the  real  only  if  we  relate  it  to  a  deeper  activity, 
in  the  light  of  which  it  becomes  the  formal 
elaborative  aspect  of  the  process  of  real  knowl- 
edge. Now,  this  deeper  activity  of  reason  is  one 
that  springs  from  an  insight  which  may  be  ex- 
pressed as  follows:  Nothing  is  rationally  ex- 
plained that  is  not  grounded  in  something  that 
has  more  reality  than  itself.  In  short,  the  in- 
sight into  the  qualitative  transcendence  of  a 
real  grounding  principle  was  the  great  contri- 
bution of  Leibnitz  at  this  point.  The  formal 
statement  of  this  insight  is  to  be  found  in  the 
phrase  ratio-sufficiens,  and  Leibnitz  expresses 
in  this  form  the  rational  demand  that  nothing 
can  be  regarded  as  adequately  explained  that 
has  not  been  referred  to  its  ground.    It  is  evi- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         59 

deit,  however,  that  such  a  statement  will  be 
mere  commonplace  if  it  is  not  conceived  in  the 
light  of  the  insight  to  which  I  have  referred ; — 
the  fact  that  the  sufficient  ground  of  anything  is 
something  that  qualitatively  transcends  it.  It 
then  becomes  a  most  significant  and  fruitful 
principle  since  it  forbids  the  mind  to  rest  satis- 
fied with  any  explanation  of  a  thing  that  does 
not  refer  it  to  a  qualitatively  transcendent 
ground.  This  will  not  only  motive  a  synthetic 
activity  that  looks  outside  and  beyond  the  pres- 
ent matter  for  the  grounding  fact  that  will  ex- 
plain it,  but  it  also  institutes  an  unending  pro- 
cess. The  quest  for  transcendent  grounding 
never  ends  until  the  point  is  reached  where  the 
whole  of  existence  is  seen  to  have  its  final 
ground  in  the  self-existent.  It  becomes  evident 
at  this  point  that  the  deeper  activity  of  reason, 
which  we  have  been  considering,  is  connected 
with  what  has  been  designated  in  a  former  lec- 
ture as  the  ontological  motive  of  reason;  the 
motive  which  leads  it  on  from  point  to  point  in 
the  search  for  truth  until  it  relates  all  reality 
to  the  foundation  of  the  world.  We  are  ready 
to  see  now  that  this  ontological  motive  springs 
from  an  insight,  and  that  the  insight  fixes  as 
the  goal  of  all  rational  activity,  the  point  where 
existence  will  find  its  grounding  in  the  self-ex- 
istent. It  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  this  in- 
sight that  we  are  able  to  understand  what  I 
have  called  the  ontological  motive  of  reason. 
And  since,  as  we  have  contended,  the  rational 


GO         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

motive  is  present  in  the  most  direct  and  imme- 
diate form  of  the  noetic  activity,  we  will  be  pre- 
pared for  the  contention  here  that  this  inner 
ontological  motive  of  reason  will  be  found  oper- 
ative in  the  lowest  stages  of  perception,  as  well 
as  in  the  highest  exercises  of  rationality 
Whether  we  consider  the  selective  process  by 
which  certain  experiences  are  organized  into 
objective  form:  or  the  method  by  which  the  con- 
cept of  the  object  is  formed  as  synthetizing  a 
plurality  of  otherwise  disconnected  qualities 
into  the  unity  of  a  substance ;  whether  we  con- 
sider the  appeal  that  is  made  in  every  judgment 
of  identity  to  an  order  that  gathers  up  the  frag- 
mentary and  the  perishing  into  the  unitary  and 
the  permanent;  or  the  mediating  activity,  by 
which  the  fragmentary  parts  of  a  plurality  are 
further  organized  into  a  unitary  and  unbroken 
system,  we  find  that  every  stage  reveals  the 
presence  of  this  rational  motive.  The  inner  on- 
tological principle  by  which  all  mentality  is 
actuated,  which  translates  the  whole  noetic  ac- 
tivity into  a  teleological  process,  is  rational. 
The  goal  of  the  process  is  the  rational  require- 
ment of  grounding,  which,  as  the  imminent  mo- 
tive of  all  its  stages,  becomes  explicit  at  the  end 
in  the  requirement  that  all  existence  shall  find 
its  roots  in  that  which  is  self-existent.  Now, 
the  position  I  wish  to  take  here  is  that  concep- 
tions and  conclusions  that  are  formed  according 
to  the  principles  of  our  nature,  and  are  motived 
by  the  fundamental  data  of  our  whole  experi- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         61 

ence,  will  be  able  to  bear  the  tests  of  existence 
as  well  as  that  of  rational  soundness.  In  gen- 
eral, it  is  a  false  deduction  that  separates  the 
considerations  of  existence  and  nature.  To  be 
sure  there  are  some  regions  of  abstractions  into 
which  human  reason  is  tempted  to  enter  where 
the  distinction  is  pertinent,  and  we  need  to 
bring  our  conclusions  back  to  the  test  of  existen- 
tial conditions ;  but,  after  all,  the  main  guaran- 
tee of  all  our  results  will  consist  in  the  fact  that 
they  have  been  reached  in  accordance  with  the 
fundamental  motives  and  conditions  of  our 
cognitive  or  thinking  processes.  The  scientific 
mind  does  not  burden  itself  with  the  task  of 
proving  the  reality  of  its  world,  provided  its 
conclusions  bear  the  test  of  phenomena,  and 
are  a  satisfactory  answer  to  the  questions  it 
has  asked;  nor  does  the  artist  trouble  himself 
about  the  existential  value  of  his  creations,  pro- 
vided they  realize  for  him  the  highest  standards 
of  beauty.  It  is  only  when  the  artistic  mind 
begins  to  aberrate  from  these  standards,  and  to 
produce  what  cannot  be  reconciled  with  the 
ideals  of  beauty,  that  the  question  of  its  truth 
to  reality  will  be  raised.  This  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  artistic  per- 
ception, which  brings  the  mind  into  direct  rela- 
tion with  first-hand  facts ;  a  perception  in  which 
all  men  participate  in  a  measure.  Otherwise, 
there  would  be  no  organ  in  man  to  which  the 
artist  could  appeal.  But  this  common  organ  is 
raised  to  a  higher  power  in  the  mind  of  the 


62         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

artist,  and  will  open  a  field  of  perceptions  to 
him  that  is  not  open  to  the  ordinary  man.  So 
long,  however,  as  the  productions  of  the  artistic 
genius  are  able  to  make  their  appeal  to  the,  per- 
haps dormant,  artistic  perceptions  of  the  aver- 
age mind,  and  to  arouse  in  it  a  sense  of  appre- 
ciation for  that  which  transcends  its  own  range 
of  intuitions,  while  appealing  to  something  in 
itself  that  is  akin  to  the  highest,  the  question 
of  the  correspondence  of  the  artist's  concep- 
tions with  reality  need  not  be  raised.  Applying 
this  conclusion  to  the  problem  of  religious 
knowledge,  I  would  lay  down,  at  this  point,  the 
following  proposition :  If  it  he  true,  as  we  have 
endeavored  to  prove  in  these  lectures,  that  the 
religious  consciousness  of  man  is  an  organ  that 
brings  the  mind  of  man  into  first-hand  and  per- 
ceptive relations  with  existential  realities,  and, 
if  it  he  further  true,  as  ive  have  endeavored  to 
prove,  that  the  rational  motive  at  the  heart  of 
the  whole  noetic  activity  has  its  roots  in  the  pri- 
mary religious  consciousness;  in  its  original 
datum,  the  sense  of  the  presence  of  a  transcen- 
dent and  grounding  reality;  and  if  it  he  true,  as 
we  have  also  sought  to  prove,  that  this  inner 
motive  of  the  noetic  activity  develops  into  the 
notion  of  ground,  which  is  the  ideal  of  the  tvhole 
reasoning  process;  then  tve  have  reasons  that 
are  sufficient  for  concluding  that  the  religious 
consciousness,  like  the  artistic,  for  example,  is 
an  organ  of  hnoivledge  where  judgments  when 
reached,  in  accordance  with  motives  and  data 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         63 

that  are  fundamental  to  it,  will  have  epistemo- 
logical  value. 

The  bearing  of  this  proposition  on  the  mod- 
ern criticism  of  the  so-called  proofs  of  the  ex- 
istence of  God  will,  I  think,  be  obvious.  The 
classical  criticism  is  that  of  Kant,  and  the  verve 
of  it  will  be  found  in  his  critique  of  the  onto- 
logical  proof.  The  method  of  this  proof  con- 
sists in  first  separating  the  conceptual  process, 
in  which  the  idea  of  God  is  developed,  from  the 
data  that  connect  conception  with  existence. 
It  is  then  possible,  as  Kant  does,  to  concede  all 
the  intrinsic  rational  force  that  is  claimed  for 
the  idea  by  its  authors,  while,  at  the  same  time, 
putting  in  the  plea  that  the  question  of  exist- 
ence is  not  thereby  affected.  This  will  be  be- 
yond cavil  if  you  study  Kant 's  reasoning.  The 
idea  of  God,  he  contends,  is  formed  according 
to  the  standards  and  requirements  of  reason. 
It  is  rationally  without  flaw,  and  embodies  what 
is  necessarily  involved  in  a  rationally  complete 
and  satisfactory  system  of  being.  But  this  does 
not  even  bear  directly  on  the  question  of  ex- 
istence. At  the  outset,  the  question  of  existence 
has  been  so  completely  separated  from  that  of 
nature  that  an  impassable  gulf  yawns  between 
them,  so  that,  how^ever  cogent  the  idea  of  God 
may  be,  it  can  have  no  bearing  on  the  problem 
of  existence.  Moreover,  the  gap  is  so  wide  and 
absolute  that  no  credential  can  pass  over  from 
existence  to  qualify  in  any  sense  the  idea.  I 
hope  I  do  not  exaggerate  when  I  say  that  a 


64         PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

situation  like  the  one  that  Kant  has  created 
seems  to  be  so  strained  and  artificial  as  to  de- 
stroy the  possibility  of  continued  credence.  In 
a  procedure  with  which  we  are  perfectly  fa- 
miliar, we  are  in  the  habit  of  testing  our  judg- 
ments by  bringing  them  before  the  tribunal  of 
standards  that  are  germane  to  the  matter  that 
is  being  tested.  It  does  not  occur  to  the  sculp- 
tor to  apply  the  rules  of  surveying  to  his  statue, 
nor  will  the  legislator  appeal  to  the  laws  of 
poetry.  Every  subject-matter  has  standards 
that  are  germane,  and,  when  these  are  satis- 
fied, the  question  of  reality  has  been  answered. 
Now,  the  spring  of  the  difficulty  mth  Kant  will 
be  found,  I  think,  in  an  initial  assumption  he 
makes  with  regard  to  existence.  Kant  was  al- 
ways more  than  half  an  empiricist  in  some  of 
his  conceptions,  and,  in  that  of  existence,  he 
was  entirely  so.  The  senses  supply  to  him  the 
only  type  of  existence.  That  which  does  not 
phenomenalize  in  some  physical  order  or  time 
or  space  cannot  be  really  existent.  But  man's 
real  self  and  God  have  no  such  phenomenal 
character :  they  cannot,  therefore,  be  proved  to 
really  exist.  This  being  true,  however  convinc- 
ing the  conception  of  God  as  an  unphenomenal 
being  may  be,  it  will  not  bear  the  application  of 
the  only  standard  of  existential  reality  within 
the  limits  of  our  knowledge.  God  cannot  be  af- 
firmed, therefore,  as  a  real  being.  From  this 
point  of  view,  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  see  that 
Kant's  conclusion  about  the  ontological  proof 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         65 

was  foregone.  God  cannot  be  said  to  really 
exist  because  He  cannot  be  affirmed  to  exist  as 
a  phenomenal  reality.  Let  us,  however,  refuse 
to  commit  ourselves  to  the  empirical  dogma  that 
limits  existential  reality  to  the  sense  form.  For 
this,  if  we  recall  what  has  gone  before,  we  will 
have  ample  justification.  Rather,  man  will  have 
as  many  types  of  reality  as  he  has  primary  in- 
tuitions, and  we  have  made  it  evident,  I  think, 
that  the  intutition  of  the  transcendent  is  pri- 
mary. A  rational  doctrine  of  self -consciousness 
will  reveal  a  type  of  self -reality  that  is  not  con- 
formed to  the  sense-type.  When  we  refuse  to 
honor  the  assumption  of  empiricism  that  the 
sense-type  of  existence  is  the  sole  criterion  of 
reality,  we  have  broken  the  barrier  that  sepa- 
rates off  the  noumenal  or  the  non-sensible  from 
possible  knowledge.  Anything  that  is  know- 
able  has  real  existence.  Taking  our  stand,  then, 
that  there  are  as  many  knowable  types  of  real 
existence  as  there  are  forms  of  primary  intui- 
tion, the  whole  of  our  previous  discussion  may 
be  taken  as  justification  of  the  position  that  the 
religious  type  of  being,  that  of  a  self-existent 
ground  of  all  existence,  is  one  of  real  existence. 
Its  intuition  is  central  in  the  religious  conscious- 
ness, supplying  the  norm  of  its  perceptions,  and 
revealing  to  man  the  primary  datum  of  relig- 
ious knowledge. 

Let  us,  then,  on  this  basis,  make  an  effort  to 
reconstruct  the  ontological  proof.  The  claim 
that  is  common  to  all  the  exponents  of  the  on- 


66         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

tological  proof  is  that  the  existence  of  God  is 
necessarily  involved  in  his  conception,  provided 
this  is  able  to  bear  the  tests  of  a  real  idea  of 
reason.  Few  of  the  ontologists,  however,  have 
fully  realized  the  true  significance  of  their  own 
assumption.  Descartes,  for  example,  treats  ex- 
istence as  an  attribute  which,  when  denied  of  the 
idea,  leaves  it  imperfect  as  an  idea.  Kant  de- 
nies that  existence  can  be  regarded  as  a  quality, 
and  proves  that  the  idea  of  a  hundred  dollars 
will  be  the  same  whether  it  exists  or  not.  Now, 
this  is  conclusive  against  Descartes,  and,  per- 
haps, against  Anselm.  But  it  is  to  the  interest 
of  the  ontological  proof  to  deny  that  existence 
can  be  treated  as,  in  any  ordinary  sense,  a 
quality.  Analysis  will  show  that  the  whole  of 
the  idea  of  an  object  is  made  up  of  qualities  of 
kind.  They  do  not  say  that  an  object  is,  but 
are  wholly  devoted  to  determining  its  what. 
This  makes  it  clear  that  there  is  a  sense  in 
which  existence  is  extra-ideal.  But  there  are 
two  different  angles  from  which  an  idea  may  be 
viewed;  the  first  and  most  obvious  is  that  of 
its  form.  In  this,  it  is  an  activity  of  ideation 
that  is  exclusively  employed  in  determining 
qualities,  and  organizing  them  into  a  unitary 
conception.  From  this  point  of  view,  it  will  be 
called  a  rational  conception.  The  second  point 
of  view  is  that  of  content  or  objective  signifi- 
cance. Viewed  from  this  angle,  the  idea  will  be 
considered  as  the  qualification  of  some  object, 
as  summing  up  what  we  believe  to  be  true  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  67 

its  nature.  It  is  from  this  objective  relation 
that  the  question  of  existence  arises.  We  do 
not  ask  whether  the  idea  exists;  we  know  that 
it  does ;  but  in  its  objective  character,  in  its  ref- 
erence to  the  system  of  reality  is  it  true  ?  Does 
it  tell  the  truth  about  real  existence?  It  will 
be  clear  that  this  is  a  question  not  about  an  ad- 
ditional quality,  but  rather  about  the  claim  of 
the  idea  as  a  whole  as  to  the  real  existence  of 
its  objective  content.  The  non-existence  of  its 
content  would  not  affect  the  idea  as  a  plexus  of 
qualities.  The  case  may  be  put  hypothetically. 
Whether  God  exists  or  does  not  exist  as  a  real 
being  does  not  affect,  one  way  or  another,  the 
rational  adequacy  of  his  idea,  provided  this  idea 
has  been  formed  according  to  the  canons  of 
reason  and  is  perfect.  Why,  then,  is  not  the 
Kantian  criticism  justified!  The  answer  will 
be  two-fold.  In  the  first  place,  the  assumption 
of  the  Kantial  critique  that  a  real  idea  may  be 
formed  entirely  apart  from  the  processes  of  ex- 
istence is  false  and  contrary  to  experience,  as 
well  as  refuted  by  considerations  we  have  al- 
ready advanced.  This  being  true,  the  process 
by  which  a  real  idea  is  formed  is  brought  into 
vital  relations  with  existential  processes,  and 
will  derive  from  them  the  presumption  of  real 
existence.  Secondly,  to  recall  a  conclusion  we 
have  already  reached,  the  claim  of  the  suflfi- 
ciency  of  the  idea  of  God  to  prove  His  real  ex- 
istence does  not  rest  on  the  mere  existence  of 
the  object.    If  God  be  conceived  to  be  merely 


68         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

existent  like  other  finite  objects,  then  the  criti- 
cism of  the  old  monk  on  Anselm's  claim  would 
be  valid.  The  idea  of  a  perfect  island  does  not 
carry  with  it  the  necessary  existence  of  the 
island.  But  Anselm  might  have  replied  that  it 
was  not  mere  existence  but  self-existence  that  is 
involved  in  the  idea  of  God.  He  might  have 
said  that  while  the  existence  of  all  finite  things 
is  contingent  and  cannot  be  assumed  as  neces- 
sary; on  the  contrary,  the  self-existence  of  a 
non-contingent  ground  of  all  being  is  neces- 
sarily involved  in  the  very  conception  of  it.  On 
this  ground,  Anselm  would  have  been  invincible, 
and  the  ontological  proof,  when  rested  on  this 
ground,  will  prove  itself  able  to  resist  all  at- 
tacks. 

Let  us  make  sure  of  this  conclusion  before 
passing  on  to  other  considerations,  for  in  this 
is  involved  the  whole  claim  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness to  have  a  world-theory  of  its  own. 
We  may,  without  further  ado,  dismiss  Kant's 
divorce  of  real  existence  from  the  normal  pro- 
cess by  which  ideas  are  formed,  as  unsound. 
Why,  then,  do  we  take  the  principle  of  ontology, 
the  principle  of  the  ontological  proof,  as  the 
central  nerve  of  the  theoretic  basis  and  claims 
of  religion?  We  can  answer  this  now  without 
undue  elaboration.  Because  ontology  rests  on 
the  insight  and  postulate  of  self-existence.  It 
takes  as  its  primary  datum  the  self-existence  of 
the  transcendent;  that  is,  the  self-existent 
ground  of  all  reality,  and  it  rests  the  cogency 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         69 

of  its  claim  on  the  fact  that,  when  we  study  the 
processes  of  the  souPs  activity,  either  intellec- 
tually, emotionally  or  volitionally,  we  find  that 
they  attach  themselves  to  reality  by  means  of 
their  inner  ontological  motive,  which  forbids 
them  to  rest  until  they  have  reached  a  ground 
of  existence  that  will  supply  the  explanatory 
principle  of  the  whole.  The  lesson  of  ontology 
is  that  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  existence 
is  the  same,  and  that  the  whole  process  of  re- 
ality can  be  rendered  intelligible  and  self -con- 
sistent by  bringing  it  around  to  the  point  of  its 
beginning.  This  is  what  we  mean  when,  in  re- 
ligious phraseology,  we  characterize  God  as  the 
Alpha  and  Omega;  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  all  things.  The  detailed  verification  of  this 
conclusion  we  cannot  attempt  here;  it  will  be 
found  in  following  out,  into  greater  detail,  the 
data  and  principles  which  we  have  not  done 
much  more  than  formulate  in  the  preceding  lec- 
tures of  this  course,  and  I  wish  to  say  right 
here  that  the  necessary  limits  of  these  lectures 
have  made  them  as  conspicuous  for  what  they 
have  omitted  as  for  what  they  have  included  in 
a  brief  and  inadequate  discussion. 

There  is  one  other  topic  on  which  I  wish  to 
dwell  briefly  before  closing  this  lecture.  The 
plea  which  we  have  made  here  for  the  theoretic 
rights  of  religion  brings  us  into  apparent  col- 
lision at  least,  with  the  doctrine  of  Professor 
Hoffding  and  others,  who  deny  this  theoretic 
claim,  and,  as  Professor  Hoffding  does,  limit  re- 


70  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ligion  to  the  conservation  of  values  in  the  world. 
Leaving  out  of  consideration  the  negative  side 
of  the  doctrine,  which  we  are  the  more  justifi- 
able in  doing  in  view  of  the  plea  already  made 
for  the  theoretic  claims  of  religion,  I  wish  to 
consider  for  a  few  minutes  the  question  whether 
the  motive  of  value  can  be  maintained  at  its 
maximum  altogether  apart  from  the  question 
of  the  theoretic  truth  of  the  value-consideration 
itself.  It  is  not  claimed  here  that  a  relative 
separation  of  worth-considerations  from  those 
of  theoretic  truth  may  not  be  both  possible  and 
desirable.  This  is  freely  conceded,  and  the  im- 
portance of  the  worth-consideration  is  insisted 
on.  But  the  position  I  wish  to  argue  here  is 
that  the  distinction  is  only  relative,  and  that 
value-judgments  will  be  impoverished  if  the 
separation  is  made  absolute.  What  Professor 
Hoff ding's  conception  of  religion  in  its  out- 
working is,  I  am  unable  to  say,  but  we  have  an 
example  of  the  divorce  in  the  case  of  Kant's 
moral  theology.  Having  determined  that,  theo- 
retically, the  existence  of  God  cannot  be  main- 
tained, while  conceding  the  moral  value  of  the 
conception,  Kant  works  out  a  practical  theol- 
ogy which  consists  in  affirming  God  as  a  postu- 
late of  the  moral  consciousness.  The  founda- 
tions of  morality  would  be  impaired,  and  the 
unconditional  worth  of  its  judgments  would  be 
weakened  if  the  foundations  were  not  secured 
by  the  postulate  of  a  Supreme  Being,  whose 
care  it  will  be  to  guarantee  the  moral  order  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION         71 

the  world.  This,  I  think,  is  more  creditable  to 
Kant's  heart  than  it  is  to  his  head;  for,  when 
challenged  to  say  how  a  being,  whose  existence 
cannot  be  affirmed  theoretically,  can  yet  be  the 
mainstay  of  our  moral  Judgments,  he  can  only 
give  this  counsel:  The  idea  of  God  is  so  valu- 
able that  you  cannot  afford  to  deny  His  real  ex- 
istence. Otherwise,  morality  would  cease  to  be 
unconditionally  valid :  Act,  therefore,  as  though 
God  did  exist,  and  you  will  be  right.  But,  aside 
from  the  impossibility  of  acting  with  full  as- 
surance on  an  assumption  that  we  cannot  know 
to  be  true,  Kant's  position  is  self-refuting ;  for, 
if  the  unconditional  worth  of  morality  is  the 
ground  on  which  we  are  to  postulate  God  as  a 
real  being,  and,  if  the  failure  to  make  this  postu- 
late impairs  the  unconditional  value  of  moral- 
ity, then  the  worth  of  morality  is  impaired,  and 
the  full  reason  for  making  the  postulate  does 
not  exist.  We  come  upon  a  typical  difficulty 
here  in  Kant;  one  that  besets  all  attempts  to 
make  the  separation  between  truth  and  value 
absolute.  Professor  Hoffding  himself  seems  to 
recognize  this  when  he  regards  it  as  a  desider- 
atum, if  it  were  possible,  that  some  reconciling 
medium  between  the  value  judgment  of  religion 
and  the  truth  judgment  should  be  discovered. 
The  doctrine  here  defended  is  that  no  absolute 
divorce  is  possible ;  that  the  denial  of  the  theo- 
retic claims  of  religion  so  diminishes  its  worth 
that  it  soon  ceases  to  be  a  prime  force  in  the 
life  of  humanity. 


72         PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

Lecture  IV.    Synthesis  of  the  Immediate  and 
Mediate  in  Religious  Knowledge 

When  Professor  James  characterizes  relig- 
ious experience  as  introducing  the  mind  of  man 
into  a  new  dimension  of  life,  he  is  using  more 
than  a  figure  of  speech.  The  statement  is  scien- 
tifically accurate,  and,  as  I  hope  to  show,  is 
capable  of  demonstration.  If  we  refer  back  to 
the  conclusions  we  have  reached  about  the  pri- 
mary datum  of  the  religious  consciousness,  it 
will  appear  that  what  we  have  claimed  for  the 
religious  intuition  is  the  revelation  of  a  new  di- 
mension of  life.  Let  us  consider  in  this  light 
the  whole  original  insight  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, that  of  a  self-active  subject  of  ex- 
perience in  perceptual  relations  with  the  self- 
existent  ground  of  its  existence.  If  we  say  that 
the  empirical  conception  of  the  self  as  a  flowing 
stream,  or  as  a  series  of  perishable  states,  rep- 
resents the  first  dimension  of  conscious  exist- 
ence, it  will  follow  that  the  conception  of  the 
rational  or  real  self  as  a  unitary  and  perdur- 
able being  will  represent  a  two  dimensional  ex- 
istence. Now,  we  are  in  danger  of  being  led 
astray  here  by  space-analogies.  Spatially  con- 
ceived, the  first  dimension  is  a  line,  w^ile  the 
second  is  a  flat.  Some  mathematicians  have  in- 
dulged in  curious  speculations  about  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  being  who  dwelt  in  flat  land,  and 
had  no  perception  of  a  third  dimension.  This, 
however,  is  misleading,  for  we  know  that  con- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         73 

sciousness  cannot  be  spatially  determined,  and, 
though  there  is  some  ground,  as  Bergson  has 
shown,  for  using  the  linear  dimension  of  space 
as  a  symbol  of  the  mental  series,  there  are  none 
that  would  justify  the  employment  of  the  flat 
in  the  same  way.  Our  conscious  experience  re- 
veals to  us  the  fact  that  the  second  or  rational 
dimension  is  that  by  which  the  series  of  states 
is  connected  with  an  inner  subjectivity,  which 
relates  all  its  parts  to  a  common  centre,  through 
which  relation  they  become  elements  in  a  uni- 
tary and  perdurable  experience.  When,  with 
the  empiricist,  we  speak  uni-dimensionally, 
there  is  only  the  linear  analogy  for  our  guid- 
ance, in  the  light  of  which  the  series  is  per- 
petually resolving  into  its  plurality  of  states, 
and  losing  itself  in  the  flux.  But  when  we  speak 
duo-dimensionally,  we  have  a  more  adequate 
symbol,  that  of  a  subject-owned  experience  for 
our  guidance  in  the  light  of  which  the  serial 
states  are  transformed  and  take  on  a  new  sig- 
nificance. For  the  fact  is  not  that  simply  a  new 
region  has  been  added  to  insight  which  gives 
the  plus-sign  of  a  new  dimension.  The  fact  is 
one  of  far  greater  significance.  The  light  of 
the  new  dimension  transforms  the  terms  of  the 
old,  and  imparts  to  them  a  character  and  signifi- 
cance they  did  not  before  possess.  For  it  is 
evident  that  the  individual  terms  that  are  con- 
nected by  the  serial  linkage  could  not,  as  an  ab- 
stract series,  be  aware  of  their  serial  character. 
This  awareness  will  be  the  function  of  some 


74         PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION 

consciousness  that  qualitatively  transcends  the 
series.  This  difficulty  long  ago  gave  trouble  to 
John  Stuart  Mill,  who  found  difficulty  in  con- 
ceiving how  a  series  could  be  conscious  of  itself. 
The  truth  is  that,  from  the  insight  of  the  duo- 
dimensional  or  self-consciousness,  it  is  seen  to 
be  strictly  impossible.  The  consciousness  of 
two  dimensions  brings  in  a  light  that  gives  a 
new  character  to  the  terms  of  the  series.  They 
become  aware  of  their  serial  character  and  of 
other  members  of  the  series,  and,  being  perish- 
able, when  they  die  are  able  to  make  the  suc- 
ceeding state  their  residuary  legatee.  That  this 
is  no  fancv  has  been  shown  bv  James  in  his 
elaborately  worked  out  doctrine  of  the  perish- 
able self.  According  to  James,  the  old  belief  in 
a  perdurable  subject  of  experience  is  fallacious, 
and  will  not  bear  destructive  criticism.  It  must, 
he  contends,  be  replaced  by  the  uni-dimensional 
conception  of  a  thought  that  is  part  of  the 
stream  and  passes,  but,  in  passing,  hands  over 
its  treasure  to  the  thought  that  follows.  It  is 
a  curious  short-sightedness  that  prevented 
James  from  seeing  that  it  is  only  the  duo-di- 
mensional consciousness  that  makes  a  transac- 
tion of  this  testamentary  sort  possible.  For  it 
is  true  that,  looked  at  from  tlie  purely  empirical 
point  of  view,  this  seems  to  be  exactly  what 
happens.  The  consciousness  of  self  is  ex- 
pressed in  a  thought  that  exists  only  momen- 
tarily, and  another  reigns  in  its  stead.  And  the 
singular   fact  which   troubled  Mill,   though  it 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         75 

does  not  seem  to  have  troubled  James,  is  that 
the  new  self -thought  is  aware  of  the  act  of  in- 
heritance, and  traces  its  own  fortunes  back  to 
its  dead  ancestor.  This  would  be  perfectly  in- 
telligible from  the  standpoint  of  a  duo-dimen- 
sional consciousness,  but,  from  the  empirical 
point  of  view,  it  is  as  surprising  as  would  be 
the  phenomenon  of  a  man  walking  on  one  leg. 
The  doctrine  we  wish  to  make  clear  and  em- 
phatic here  is  that,  in  the  light  of  the  new  di- 
mension, no  fact  of  the  old  dimension  remains 
what  it  was  before ;  it  takes  on  a  new  character 
that  belongs  to  it  only  by  virtue  of  perceptions 
which  come  from  a  transcending  source  of  light. 
It  will  be  obvious,  from  this,  what  is  meant 
when  we  say  that  the  first  intuitions  of  religion 
introduce  into  the  human  consciousness  the 
transforming  sense  of  a  new  dimension.  Just 
as  it  is  true  that  the  empirically  perishing  self 
cannot  be  conscious  of  its  inheritance  from  its 
ancestor,  nor,  after  it  is  dead,  hand  over  its 
possessions  to  its  successor,  unless  there  be  an 
insight  that  comes  from  a  higher  consciousness ; 
so  it  will  appear  to  be  true  that  the  duo-dimen- 
sional conciousness  will  be  unable  to  translate 
its  experience  into  that  of  a  subject  that  is 
stable  and  perdurable,  without  the  transform- 
ing agency  of  the  tri-dimensional  consciousness 
of  religion.  Let  us  analyze  this  point  more  in 
detail.  If  self-consciousness  only  made  us 
aware  of  ourselves  as  the  subjects  of  particular 
experiences,  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  lift 


76         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ourselves  out  of  the  empirical  stream.     For, 
like  the  order  of  perception  in  general,  our  par- 
ticular acts  of  self-consciousness  belong  to  an 
order  that  is  pluralistic  and  broken.    "We  might 
suppose  a  second  dimension  then,  in  the  light 
of    which    our    serial    states    would    organize 
around  self-centres.    But,  if  this  were  all,  these 
self -centres  would  partake  of  the  serial  charac- 
ter, and  would  present  the  phenomenon  of  a 
passing  series  of  self-centred  states.    This  was, 
no  doubt,  what  James  had  in  mind.    But  what 
he  did  not  see  was  that,  in  order  to  be  true  to 
our  whole  self -consciousness,  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  find  some  higher  ground  from  which  the 
self  could  transcend  the  serial  flux,  and  secure 
for  itself  a  more  stable  position.    When  I  say, 
in  order  to  be  true  to  the  whole  self -conscious- 
ness, I  can  only  explain  by  appealing  to  the 
judgment  of  personal  identity,  in  which  a  con- 
scious subject  that,  as  a  fact  of  natural  history, 
has  only  a  momentary  existence,  appeals  to  an 
order  of  existence  that  is  unbroken  and  perma- 
nent.   Now,  what  I  wish  to  insist  on  here  is  that 
this  conscious  appeal  to  the  judgment  of  iden- 
tity transcends  the  ordinary  consciousness  in 
precisely  the  same  sense  as  the  awareness  of 
our  unitary  self  transcends  the  limits  of  a  serial 
consciousness.    What  it  does,  in  the  judgment 
of  personal  identity,  is  to  identify  its  true  life 
with  an  order  that  abides  through  its  changes 
and  imparts  to  them  an  unbroken — that  is,  a 
non-serial  existence.    For,  in  pronouncing  such 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         77 

a  judgment,  as  that  of  identity,  we  are  always 
exemplifying  the  scriptural  injunction  to  lay 
up  our  treasure  where  moth  and  rust  do  not  cor- 
rupt, and  where  thief  will  not  break  through 
and  steal. 

The  question,  then,  is  how  it  can  be  made  to 
appear  that  this  conserving  judgment  is  pos- 
sible only  in  the  light  of  the  higher  insight  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  If  we  can  make 
this  clear,  we  will  be  able  to  accept  Tolstoy's 
definition  of  religion  as  'Hhat  by  which  men 
live"  as  literally  true.  Let  us  at  this  point  go 
back  a  little  and  recall  some  conclusions  we  have 
already  drawn.  You  will  bear  in  mind  that, 
at  one  point  in  our  discussion,  we  reached  the 
definition  of  the  real  self  or  subject  of  experi- 
ence as  a  self-active  being.  The  reasons  for 
this  definition,  which  were  not  then  fully  stated, 
I  will  attempt  to  briefly  enumerate  here.  In  the 
first  place,  we  have  learned  that  all  the  real  ac- 
tivities of  the  mind  are  self-determined,  for,  in 
the  light  of  the  best  psychological  analysis,  it 
may  be  said  to  have  been  demonstrated  that  the 
cause  of  choice,  or  any  other  characteristic  ac- 
tion of  the  mind,  is  the  self  that  acts.  In  other 
words,  it  is  a  form  of  what  we  may  call  self- 
activity.  That  self -activity  is  the  primary  form 
of  mental  activity  will  further  appear  from  the 
fact  that,  if  we  deny  initiative  to  the  mind  in  its 
actions,  we  thereby  place  the  initiative  in  other 
than  mind,  and  reduce  the  mind  to  a  purely  pas- 
sive and  receptive  agent.     This,  in  the  first 


78         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

place,  is  not  intelligible,  and,  in  the  second 
place,  belies  the  consciousness  that  connects  our 
responsibility  with  the  sense  of  our  ownership 
of  our  actions,  a  sense  that  would  be  impossible 
were  our  actions  determined  mechanically,  as 
one  billiard  ball  by  the  propulsion  of  another. 
I  think  I  am  safe  in  saying  that,  in  these  times, 
onlv  the  extremist  will  denv  real  initiative  to  the 
mind  in  connection  with  its  activities.  No  proof 
is  needed  to  make  it  clear  that  real  initiative  in- 
volves the  power  of  self-activity — that  is,  the 
power  of  action  that  is  self -initiative.  If,  how- 
ever, we  consider  what  this  power  of  self-activ- 
itv  involves  intrinsicallv,  we  will  find  that  it 
cannot  be  ascribed  to  any  being  that  is  conceived 
abstractly  as  dependent  for  its  being  on  some 
more  ultimate  spring  of  existence.  For  it  will 
be  clear  on  reflection  that  only  the  self-existent 
is  capable  of  real  self-initiative.  In  other 
words,  it  is  only  being  as  self-existent  that  can 
be  regarded  as  self-active  in  an  unqualified 
sense.  If,  as  I  think  we  are  obliged  to,  we 
ascribe  self -activity  to  the  human  subject,  we 
seem  to  be  logically  committed  to  the  conclusion 
that  it  is  also  self-existent,  which,  in  another 
place,  we  have  been  led  to  deny.  Now,  there 
are  two  ways  open  to  us  at  this  point.  We  may, 
without  further  parley,  take  the  pantheistic 
road,  and  identify  the  soul  with  the  self-ex- 
istent ground  of  all  existence.  This  is,  of 
course,  the  solution  which  much  of  the  deeper 
thought  of  the  world  has  reached ;  the  practical 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         79 

identification  of  the  real  self  with  the  principle 
of  absolute  existence.  The  master  in  the  Upani- 
shads  leads  his  pupil  on  by  individual  examples 
to  seek  the  invisible  principle  that  is  concealed 
in  all  the  things  that  appear  to  the  senses,  and, 
when  he  has  reached  the  end  of  his  analysis,  and 
found  nothing  visible  or  phenomenal,  the  master 
concludes  "that  art  thou."  We  have  here  very 
clearly  the  identification  of  the  soul  with  the 
self-existent  principle  of  all  existence.  But 
there  is  another  way  open  to  which  we  seem  to 
be  committed  here,  if  the  whole  self -conscious- 
ness of  man  involves,  not  alone  the  sense  of  his 
two-dimensional  self,  but,  also  the  sense  of  the 
transcendent  ground  of  his  own  existence.  This 
gives  him,  to  use  James'  analogy,  the  sense  of 
a  new  dimension,  and  the  insight  which  trans- 
forms his  two-dimensional  world,  and  imparts 
a  character  to  his  real  selfhood,  which  it  would 
not  otherwise  possess.  Now,  it  is  this  fact  of 
the  transforming  light  of  the  new  dimension 
that  is  the  significant  consideration  here,  and  it 
is  this  that  I  shall  ask  you  to  follow  me  in  elabo- 
rating in  the  remainder  of  this  lecture.  Des- 
cartes takes  the  position,  in  his  fourth  medita- 
tion, that  the  knowledge  of  God  is  not  only  the 
most  clear  of  all  knowledge,  but  that  it  is  the 
ground  of  clearness  in  all  other  fields  of  knowl- 
edge. This  position  Descartes  is  unable  to  re- 
duce to  demonstration,  because  he  seems  to  lack 
some  of  the  data  necessary  to  a  proof.  Had  he 
clearly  realized  the  fact  that  the  principle  of  the 


80         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ontological  proof  of  God's  existence  is  the 
identification  of  him  with  the  self -existent 
ground  of  all  existence,  it  would  then  have 
occurred  to  him  that  an  appeal  to  this  principle 
would  not,  in  the  first  instance,  be  an  inference 
of  reason  but  a  datum  of  immediate  insight.  In 
the  light  of  this  insight,  the  existence  of  God 
would  be  the  clearest  of  all  knowledge  for  the 
reason  not  alone  of  its  immediacy,  but  also,  and 
more  significantly,  because  it  would  be  an  in- 
sight that  would  accompany  and  condition  all 
other  knowledge.  It  is  this  latter  point  that  will 
claim  our  attention  here.  How  can  the  propo- 
sition be  established  that  all  our  knowledge  is 
conditioned  and  qualitatively  affected  by  the  in- 
sight of  the  religious  consciousness.  There  are 
several  steps  in  the  proof  that  we  shall  offer. 
In  the  first  place,  all  knowledge  of  existence 
rests,  in  the  last  analysis,  on  the  postulate  of 
self-existence.  The  world  cannot  be  contingent 
in  the  last  resort  of  its  being.  It  is  a  clear 
datum  that,  without  the  self -existent,  the  con- 
tingent could  not  be.  But  it  has  been  made  evi- 
dent that  this  postulate  rests  on  the  insight  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  Again  it  has  been 
proved,  in  previous  discussions,  that,  in  every 
genuine  act  of  knowledge,  two  orders  are  in- 
volved; the  empirical  order,  in  which  the  cog- 
nition is  simply  a  member  of  a  broken  and 
pluralistic  series;  a  term  that  perishes  in  the 
using.  But  in  every  act  of  cognition  there  is 
something  that  proves  eternal.    This  is  revealed 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         81 

in  the  objective  appeal  to  an  order  that  is  per- 
manent, though  it  is,  at  the  same  time,  invisible. 
When  I  look  out  and  cognize  a  building,  my  act 
is  perishable  and  soon  disappears.  The  visible 
part  of  the  phenomenon  perishes  with  my  cog- 
nition, but  cognition  is  what  it  is  only  by  virtue 
of  the  appeal  it  makes  to  an  invisible  order  that 
transcends  the  perishable  order  of  perception, 
and  is  unitary,  unbroken  and  perdurable.  If 
we  take  the  judgment  of  recognition,  the  case 
becomes  clearer  still;  for,  from  a  momentary 
act,  in  which  we  recognize  a  visible  phenomenon 
that  is  but  a  complex  of  perishable  qualities,  we 
affirm  an  invisible  order  of  existence  that  has 
continued  unbroken  and  perdurable  in  the  long 
intervals  between  the  occurrences  of  our  perish- 
able experience.  Nor  do  we  fill  up  the  gaps  in 
the  visible  order  and  make  it  continuous  by  any 
device  like  that  of  J.  S.  Mill,  who  supposes  that 
what  we  mean  by  asserting  the  continued  ex- 
istence of  anything  is  simply  the  experience  of 
an  ideal  observer,  who  keeps  himself  in  circum- 
stances where  his  perceptions  will  constantly 
repeat  themselves  and  give  a  continuous  order. 
It  requires  very  little  penetration  to  see  that 
something  deeper  is  involved;  that,  when  we  af- 
firm the  continuous  existence  of  the  objects  of 
our  cognition,  we  are  really  pronouncing  an 
ontological  judgment.  We  are,  by  implication, 
asserting  the  great  truth  that,  in  every  act  of 
cognition,  the  appeal  is  in  fact  to  some  onto- 
logical grounding  of  the  phenomenon,  without 


82         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

which  the  act  would  lose  its  real  significance. 
This  consideration  may  be  generalized  and  ex- 
tended so  as  to  cover  the  whole  scope  of  knowl- 
edge ;  and  it  may  be  applied  outside  the  scope  of 
the  noetic  activity  to  the  movement  in  the  life 
of  the  emotions  or  volitions.  Everywhere  the 
real  significance  of  the  movement  will  be  ap- 
prehended only  in  the  light  of  its  ontological 
motive,  which  demands  the  grounding  of  the 
contingent  and  perishable  in  the  self-existent 
and  permanent.  It  will  be  evident  here  that  the 
whole  activity  is  motived  by  the  transcendent 
insight  of  the  new  dimension  revealed  in  the 
religious  consciousness.  Furthermore,  when 
we  consider  our  conscious  activities  in  the  light 
of  our  deeper  consciousness  of  self,  we  will  find 
ample  evidence  of  the  same  transforming  light. 
Not  alone  is  the  consciousness  of  self-activity 
significant  for  the  judgment  of  ground,  but  the 
most  characteristic  judgments  of  self -conscious- 
ness involve  this  higher  insight.  The  rational 
consciousness,  by  which  we  relate  all  our  transi- 
tory states  to  a  subject  that  is  one  and  unbroken 
and  perdurable,  is  one  that  implies  the  pres- 
ence of  this  higher  insight.  For,  when  we  assert 
for  ourselves  a  perdurable  and  self-identical 
selfhood,  we  are  going  flat  against  all  the  em- 
pirical evidence.  The  empirical  facts  of  the 
case,  taken  abstractly,  would  only  justify  the 
judgment  of  Hume  that  a  permanent  self  is  an 
illusion;  or,  at  most,  the  judgment  of  James 
that  the  real  self  is  a  perishable  thought,  which 


PHILOSOPHY  OP  RELIGION         83 

is  unable  to  rise  above  the  stream  of  contin- 
gency. But,  to  repeat  our  former  contention, 
the  doctrine  of  the  perishable  thought  is  only 
plausible  when  a  datum  is  introduced  into  it 
that  contains  deeper  presuppositions. 

The  logical  conclusion  that  follows  from  the 
foregoing  considerations  is,  I  think  you  will  ad- 
mit, that,  in  all  the  mental  activities,  the  prin- 
ciple of  grounding  is  supplied  by  that  three- 
dimensional  consciousness,  which  we  have  called 
the  religious  consciousness;  that,  as  Words- 
worth has  said,  it  is  the  foundation  light  of  all 
our  day,  the  master  light  of  all  our  seeing :  that 
Tolstoi's  definition  of  religion  as  that  by  which 
men  live,  stands  completely  vindicated.  It  also 
supplies  a  basis  of  insight  to  the  profound  con- 
victions of  so  many  of  the  greater  religious 
thinkers,  that  the  soul  of  man  can  only  reach 
the  completeness  of  its  own  being  by  identify- 
ing itself  with  God,  the  ground-spring  of  its  ex- 
istence. This  would  seem  to  bring  our  pro- 
foundest  western  thought  round  to  the  point 
of  identity  with  the  insight  of  the  Oriental's. 
For,  as  I  have  pointed  out  in  the  illustration 
from  the  Upanishads,  the  master  and  pupil,  hav- 
ing come  upon  the  invisible  principle  of  being, 
identify  the  soul  with  it  in  the  formula:  That 
art  thou.  This  seems  strongly  pantheistic,  and 
I  will  ask  your  indulgence  a  few  minutes  in  an 
effort  to  show  how,  from  the  positions  we  have 
developed  here,  the  close  identification  of  hu- 
man spirit  with  the  divine  may  be  secured  with- 


84         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

out  involving  the  pantheistic  conclusion,  which, 
if  I  do  not  mistake,  means  the  breaking  up  of 
the  human  personality  as  a  distinct  centre  of 
individual  existence.  If  we  consider  the  situa- 
tion from  the  point  of  view  of  its  ontological 
motive,  we  will  see  that  the  impulse  in  all  this 
movement  of  identification  is  toward  the  com- 
pletion of  our  own  being.  This  would  not  seem 
to  be  consistent  with  the  breaking  up  of  our 
centre  of  individual  existence.  Again,  if  we 
bear  in  mind  that  the  sense  of  transcendence  is 
one  that  is  present  in  the  closest  relations ;  that 
otherwise  the  religious  consciousness,  and,  with 
it,  the  religious  situation,  would  disappear ;  this 
fact  will  bear  against  the  breaking  up  of  the 
centre  of  individuality.  Lastly,  we  have  found 
reason  for  affirming  an  identity  of  type  between 
the  human  soul  and  the  ground-being,  and  this 
would  mean,  reading  our  insight  from  the  hu- 
man to  the  divine,  that  the  ground-reality  is  of 
the  soul-type,  an  individual  defined  in  terms  of 
a  higher  dimension  of  being.  If  this  be  true, 
it  will  be  possible  for  us,  in  the  light  of  it,  to  be- 
gin to  see  that  entrance  into  the  life  of  this 
higher  dimension  will  not  involve  the  breaking 
up  of  our  own  individual  centre  of  existence, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  will  be  the  means  of  realiz- 
ing it  in  a  higher  sense.  This  being  true,  we 
may  conclude  that  the  impulse  of  the  soul  to 
more  and  more  identify  itself  with  the  divine 
spring  of  its  existence  may  be  given  unlimited 
scope  without  entailing  the  breaking  up  of  its 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         85 

own  individual  existence.  It  is  possible,  there- 
fore, to  turn  the  point  of  pantheism  without,  in 
any  sense,  weakening  the  force  or  the  truth  of 
that  identification  with  the  divine,  toward  which 
the  soul  is  moved  by  the  strongest  forces  of  its 
being. 

There  are  two  problems  growing  out  of  our 
study  of  religious  knowledge,  which  I  wish  to 
treat  briefly  before  closing  this  lecture.  The 
first  is  the  problem  of  the  so-called  proofs  of 
God's  existence.  I  am  not  about  to  reargue 
here  the  question  of  the  validity  of  these  his- 
torical proofs.  But  assuming  that,  on  the  basis 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  and  its  vital  con- 
nection with  the  whole  nature  of  man,  there  will 
naturally  be  evidence,  the  question  here  will 
take  the  following  form :  What  is  the  principle 
of  all  mediate  proof  of  God's  existence,  and 
what  are  the  principal  definitive  forms  or  lines 
in  which  it  may  be  stated  f  The  principle  of  all 
proof,  I  think,  we  are  in  a  position  here  to  state 
very  briefly.  It  is  this:  That,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  the  existence  of  God  adds  a  new  di- 
mension to  reality,  as  viewed  from  the  empir- 
ical standpoint,  it  will  affect  and  transform  the 
whole  of  reality  in  such  a  way  that,  in  order  to 
intelligently  understand  any  part  of  it,  we  must 
understand  its  divine  principle ;  that  is,  we  must 
be  able  to  see  it  in  the  light  of  its  self-existent 
ground.  The  principle  of  all  theistic  proof  will 
be,  therefore,  the  immediate  necessity  of  the 
self -existent  as  the  suflScient  reason  or  ground- 


86         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

big  principle  of  all  existence,  whether  consid- 
ered as  a  whole  or  in  its  details.  It  will  follow 
that,  given  any  existential  system  like  the  pres- 
ent with  which  we  are  connected,  there  will  be 
no  part  of  it,  not  even  the  smallest  and  most 
insignificant  detail,  that,  to  the  eye  of  reason, 
will  not  be  luminous  with  the  secret  of  its 
origin.  The  pebble  on  the  beach,  or  the  little 
worm  at  your  feet,  will  say  to  your  listening 
ear ;  I  am  a  being  that  exists,  but  not  of  myself. 
My  being  is  rooted  in  a  being  that  is  self-exist- 
ent, and  that  holds  me  in  my  place  against  the 
flux  of  contingency  that  is  perpetually  sweeping 
me  into  nothingness.  To  the  listening  ear  of 
reason  this  will  constitute  the  formula  of  all 
contingent  being,  and,  whether  it  be  a  star  or  a 
mote  in  the  sunbeam,  it  will  utter  the  same 
voice.  This  is  not  mere  poetic  fancy,  but  the 
soundest  philosophizing;  for,  after  science  has 
exhausted  all  its  resources  in  bringing  out  the 
nature  of  things,  it  has  only  brought  into 
clearer  light,  and  into  more  insistent  form,  the 
demand  of  reason  that  only  by  connecting  it 
with  the  self-existent  spring  of  its  existence  do 
we  reach  its  final  meaning  and  explanation.  The 
principle  of  all  theistic  evidence  is  that  which  is 
embodied  in  what  has  been  called  the  ontologi- 
cal  proof,  because  it  is  simply  a  statement  that 
the  necessity  of  self-existence  as  the  ground  of 
all  existence  is  self-evident.  The  application  of 
it  is  to  the  idea  of  God  which  has  been  formed 
according  to  the  canons  of  reason  and  is  a  real 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         87 

idea.  That  this  idea  involves  existence  in  some 
way  has  been  insisted  on  from  the  beginning. 
In  other  words,  that  the  existence  of  the  being 
conceived  in  the  idea  of  God  is  self-evident  has 
been  felt,  even  when  the  formal  demonstration 
admittedly  fell  short.  It  is  only  when  the  ex- 
istence involved  is  conceived  as  self -existence, 
we  are  able  to  say  now,  that  the  argument  be- 
comes convincing,  and  our  instinctive  feeling  of 
necessity  is  justified. 

Aside  from  the  ontological,  that  embodies  the 
principle  of  all  theistic  proof,  there  have  been 
developed  historically  three  other  forms,  which 
we  will  treat  very  briefly  here;  the  cosmologi- 
cal;  the  proof  from  the  evidence  of  design  or 
intelligence  in  nature,  the  ordinary  form  of  the 
teleological  proof;  and,  lastly,  the  proof  from 
moral  teleology  developed  by  Immanuel  Kant. 
The  principle  of  the  cosmological  proof  is  to  be 
found  in  the  contingency  of  the  phenomena  of 
empirical  existence,  whether  viewed  in  them- 
selves or  in  the  light  of  their  linkage  with  other 
phenomena,  they  are  not  self-explanatory,  but 
refer  to  something  beyond  themselves  for  their 
explanation.  This  fact  of  dependence  we  call 
contingency,  and  the  inner  motive  of  the  cosmo- 
logical proof  is  the  appeal  from  the  contingent 
to  that  which  cures  its  contingency  and  grounds 
it,  the  self -existent.  The  wide  sweep  of  this 
proof  will  be  evident  for,  touching  the  empirical 
world  at  any  point,  we  find  this  contingency  and 
its  ontological  demand.    The  proof  from  design 


88  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

is  of  a  different  character.  It  does  not  appeal 
to  the  contingency  of  things,  but,  rather,  to  the 
empirically  unseen  and  non-contingent,  the 
presence  in  the  world  of  order  and  system. 
Now,  science  finds  order  and  system  as  its  ulti- 
mata, but  the  ontological  reason,  finding  that 
these  concepts  are  not  self-explanatory,  but  that 
they  themselves  are  phenomena  that  can  be  fin- 
ally explained  only  when  their  existence  as 
phenomena  is  referred  to  some  self-existent 
ground,  in  the  light  of  which  they  will  be  con- 
nected with  intelligent  purpose,  finds  its  satis- 
faction in  connecting  order  and  system  with  in- 
telligence and  purpose,  while,  for  the  ground- 
ing of  these,  it  finds  it  necessary  to  appeal  to 
its  own  first  principle  the  necessity  of  self-ex- 
istent being  as  the  gi'ound  of  all  existence. 
When,  finally,  we  turn  to  the  Kantian  proof, 
which  we  have  called  moral  teleology,  it  would 
seem  that  here  we  have,  at  last,  found  a  line  of 
evidence  that  is  independent  of  all  theoretic 
considerations.  Now,  recalling  the  conclusion 
we  have  reached  in  regard  to  the  validity  of  a 
pure-value  consideration  when  abstracted  from 
all  implications  of  truth,  I  think  this  is  what  we 
will  be  led  to  say  about  moral  teleology.  As  a 
theoretic  proof,  its  value  will  be  measured  by 
its  bearing  on  the  question  of  existence;  in 
other  words,  on  its  epistemological  value,  con- 
ceding that  the  exigencies  of  the  moral  law 
make  God  a  moral  necessity,  the  value  of  this 
will  be  assessed  when  we  determine  what  bear- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION  89 

ing  the  moral  necessity  has  on  the  theoretic 
question  of  existence.  For  this  assessment, 
Kant  himself  furnishes  us  with  the  data.  If 
morality  represents  the  highest  values,  and 
these  values  can  be  conserved  only  by  supposing 
God  as  their  guarantee,  then  the  non-existence 
of  God  would  plunge  the  moral  universe  into 
chaos,  a  result  which  is  intolerable  to  reason. 
What,  now,  is  involved  in  this  reasoning  f  I 
think  you  \\'ill  agree  with  me  that  there  are  two 
things  involved  in  it.  In  the  first  place,  the  ap- 
peal has  been  made  to  a  genuine  theoretical  is- 
sue. If  the  non-existence  of  God,  morally,  is 
irrational,  then  it  would  be  irrational  not  to 
affirm  His  existence,  not  simply  in  the  interests 
of  morality,  but  in  the  interests  of  reason  her- 
self. Again,  when  we  seek  to  determiiie  why  it 
is  that  the  non-existence  of  God  would  mean 
the  defeat  of  reason  from  the  moral  point  of 
view,  do  we  not  find  that  the  removal  of  God 
from  the  ethical  situation  takes  away  its  self- 
existent  ground,  and  that  morality,  like  all  ex- 
istence, is  ruined  by  the  loss.  When  we  reach 
this  insight,  we  will  be  ready  for  the  conclusion 
that  the  necessity  on  which  the  strength  of  the 
moral  argument  depends  leads  directly  to  the 
postulate  of  a  self-existent  ground  of  the  moral 
as  its  only  guarantee  of  stability.  We  are  thus 
able  to  trace  all  lines  of  proof  back  to  their 
first  principle  in  the  ontological  necessity  of  a 
self-existent  ground  of  all  reality.  And  it  will 
be  clear,  without  further  proof,  that,  in  the  last 


90         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

analysis,  all  considerations  of  worth  will  only 
have  unconditional  value  it*  they  are  grounded 
in  the  self-existent,  and  that  the  proposal  to 
divorce  judgments  of  value  from  theoretic  con- 
siderations is  tantamount  to  emptying  value  it- 
self of  much  of  its  significance. 

I  pass,  in  conclusion,  to  a  brief  consideration 
of  another  problem ;  namely,  that  of  the  relation 
of  the  higher  sources  of  religious  knowledge  to 
which  we  give  the  names  inspiration  and  revela- 
tion, to  the  lower  and  more  common  sources.  If 
we  have  followed,  with  assent,  the  doctrine  that 
has  been  developed  in  the  preceding  discussions, 
we  will  be  ready,  I  think,  for  some  such  proposi- 
tion in  the  outset  as  the  following :  If  it  be  true 
that  man  is,  by  virtue  of  his  fundamental  con- 
stitution, endowed  with  a  religious  conscious- 
ness that  introduces  a  new  dimension  of  being 
into  his  conscious  life,  and  is  the  source  of  im- 
mediate intuitions  that  supply  the  first  data  of 
his  whole  experience  as  a  religious  being ;  it  will 
not,  then,  be  necessary  to  suppose  that  the  pres- 
ence of  any  new  organ  is  involved  in  the  com- 
munication of  the  highest  truths  of  religion.  I 
am  not  about  to  ask  you,  at  this  point,  to  accept 
any  statements  as  to  the  sufficiency  of  reason 
for  the  apprehension  of  religious  truth.  Far 
otherwise,  I  am  only  taking  the  ground  that,  if 
God  has  not  first  created  man  a  reasonable  be- 
ing and  left  it  to  accident  to  make  him  religious, 
but,  rather,  as  we  have  contended,  has  brought 
him  into  the  world  with  the  three-dimensional 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         91 

consciousness  of  religion,  we  are  in  a  position  to 
say  that,  in  the  conditions  of  his  nature,  man 
has  all  the  faculties  that  are  necessary  to  make 
him  the  organ  of  the  highest  truth.    It  is  only 
necessary  to  raise  his  native  powers  to  a  higher 
degree  in  order  to  put  him  on  the  plane  of 
higher  truth.    In  other  words,  if  God  desires  to 
communicate  a  higher  truth  to  the  race,  it  will 
only  be  necessary  for  Him  to  raise  the  religious 
nature   of   some  man   to   a  higher   degree   of 
spiritual  susceptibility  and  intuition  in  order 
that  the  new  truth  may  be  realized.    When  this 
heightening  of  the  natural  powers  occurs  in  the 
other  fields  we  call  it  genius;  when  in  the  field 
of  religious  perception,  we  call  it  inspiration, 
but,  in  all  instances,  it  involves  the  same  prin- 
ciple.   Let  us,  then,  consider  very  briefly  inspi- 
ration and  revelation  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
prophetic  function  in  religion.     The  prophet, 
we  say,  is  the  inspired  bearer  of  new  truths 
which  would  not  be  open  to  him  in  his  ordinary 
moods.    We  mean  that  his  spiritual  intuitions 
have  been  stimulated  and  aroused  to  a  more 
than  ordinary  degree  of  activity  and  insight; 
for  it  is  evident  that  this  elevation  can  be  at- 
tained in  no  other  way  than  by  the  sharpening 
of  the  powers  of  intuitive  insight.     This  we 
may  call  inspiration.     Now,   inspiration  may 
lead  to  truths  that  are  not  revealed;  that  is,  in 
connection  with  which  there  is  not  the  sense  of 
having  received  them  from  a  higher  source.    It 
is  likely  that  most  of  the  truths  discovered  by 


92         PHILOSOPHY  OP  RELIGION 

genius  have  been  arrived  at  in  this  way.  The 
genius  will  feel  inspired,  but  his  truths  will  not 
be  revelations  in  the  strict  sense  of  that  word. 
Such  inspiration  is,  no  doubt,  as  common  in  re- 
ligion as  in  art.  But  with  the  religious  prophet 
it  is  different.  His  dominating  consciousness  is 
that  of  an  agent  who  receives  his  message  from 
a  higher  source,  and  his  certitude  as  to  the  truth 
and  authority  of  his  message  will  spring  di- 
rectly out  of  his  consciousness  of  being  the  me- 
dium and  agent  of  a  higher  being.  Now,  the 
fact  on  which  I  wish  to  put  the  emphasis  here  is 
this.  We  have  already  reached  the  conclusion 
that  the  sense  of  the  transcendent  ground  of 
his  existence  is  a  primary  intuition  of  man's 
nature.  Let  us  suppose  that  the  inspiration  of 
the  prophet,  which,  in  general,  has  raised  his 
ordinary  intuitions  to  a  higher  degree,  has,  in 
the  case  of  the  prophet,  stimulated,  in  an  espe- 
cial sense,  his  intuition  of  the  transcendent.  It 
will  follow  that  he  will  be  dominated  with  the 
consciousness  of  the  transcendent  source  of  the 
truth  he  realizes,  and  he  will  feel  himself  to  be 
the  organ  of  the  transcendent  being,  who  re- 
veals truths  to  him  of  which  he  is  conscious  of 
not  being,  himself,  the  author.  The  conclusion 
I  am  reaching  here  is  that  we  have  here  a  ra- 
tional principle  by  which  we  can  connect  the 
highest  stages  of  religious  knowledge  with  its 
lower  stages  in  such  a  way  that  the  whole  may 
be  organized  into  a  coherent  and  rational  sys- 
tem.   If  the  objection  be  urged  that  some  truths 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         93 

of  religion  are  super-rational,  this  will  readily 
be  granted,  if  reason  be  regarded  only  as  the 
organ  of  ordinary  tnith.  But,  if  reason,  in  its 
highest  sense,  be  a  three-dimensional  faculty, 
and  has  in  it  the  light  of  the  transcendent,  then 
we  may  take  courage  and  go  forward,  for  in- 
spiration and  revelation  will  be  included  in  the 
scheme  as  organs  of  higher  rational  truth ;  then 
the  whole  issue  between  reason  and  revelation 
may  be  regarded  as  being  no  longer  vital,  for, 
if  the  central  demand  of  reason  is  for  a  God  who 
is  the  self-existent  ground  of  all  reality,  it  fol- 
lows that  reason  itself  will  be  hospitable  to  the 
highest  revelations  of  God's  truth. 


PART  II 
THE  SOUL 


THE  SOUL 

Lecture  V.  The  Soul  as  Subject  of  Religious 

Experience 

The  most  difficult  thing  the  modern  man  is 
asked  to  believe  is  that  he  has  a  soul.  His 
trouble  may  be  due  largely  to  the  form  in  which 
the  question  is  ordinarily  stated.  That  a  man 
has  a  soul  would  seem  to  classify  it  among  the 
things  he  may  possess  and  of  which  he  is,  there- 
fore, the  subject.  This  Lockian  conception  of 
the  soul  is  a  hard  one  to  entertain.  If  the  soul 
is  simply  one  of  a  man's  possessions,  like  other 
pieces  of  property,  it  may  be  lost  and  there  is 
nothing  of  which  the  modern  man  feels  more 
sure  than  this,  that,  if  he  ever  had  a  soul,  some 
how  in  the  hurly-burly  of  modern  life,  it  must 
have  dropped  out;  at  least,  he  is  not  now  con- 
scious of  having  any  such  possession.  Were  the 
question  changed,  however,  and  were  he  asked 
the  question,  **Are  you  a  soul,"  the  form  of  the 
query  would  throw  him  back  onto  himself  and 
it  would  become  a  problem  of  his  own  essential 
personality.  It  is  clear  that  the  question  when 
put  in  this  form  could  not  be  treated  with  the 
same  light  hearted  superficiality.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, the  classical  example  in  modern  philos- 
ophy of  a  sceptical  doctrine,  critically  reached 

97 


98         PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

by  a  mind  of  the  first  order,  regarding  the  re- 
ality of  the  soul  as  a  substantial  and  perdurable 
subject  of  experience;  that  of  David  Hume. 
Hume  is,  in  fact,  what  James  would  call  a  pure 
empiricist.  To  him  there  is  only  one  order  of 
being,  the  empirical  or  sensible,  and  any  mental 
content  that  is  not  in  the  last  analysis  reducible 
to  terms  of  that  order  is  fictitious  and  imagin- 
ary. Now,  if  we  carefully  attend  to  the  empiri- 
cal order,  we  find  that  it  is  resolvable  into  a 
plurality  of  parts  which  have  no  stability  in 
themselves  and  no  real  connections  with  other 
parts  of  the  plurality.  This  being  so,  there  is 
no  principle  of  continuity  that  can  bind  the  em- 
pirical into  an  unbroken  order  and,  especially, 
there  is  no  point  of  unity  from  which  the  plur- 
ality of  perishable  states  can  be  organized  into 
a  one  subject  of  experience.  The  doctrine  of  the 
one  self  that  lies  back  of  and  owns  the  states  is, 
therefore,  an  illusion.  Hume  establishes  the 
empirical  doctrine  in  detail  in,  (1)  his  sceptical 
refutation  of  the  doctrine  of  spiritual  sub- 
stance, which  consists  in  simply  applying  to  the 
mind  itself  the  logic  by  which  Berkeley  reduced 
the  concept  of  material  substance  to  an  illusion, 
reaching  the  conclusion  that  nothing  can  be 
proved  to  exist  in  consciousness  but  a  plurality 
of  conscious  states.  When  I  look  into  my  con- 
sciousness for  the  evidence  of  a  unitary  self,  I 
never  see  anything  but  a  particular  state,  and 
Hume  is  sure  that  nothing  else  exists  and  his 
scepticism  as  to  spiritual  substance  is  complete. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION         99 

(2)  The  second  count  in  Hume's  refutations  is 
his  sceptical  analysis  of  identity  as  a  real  rela- 
tion of  existence.  When  Hume  scrutinizes  the 
empirical  order,  he  finds  in  it  no  point  of  per- 
manence in  continued  existence.  What  seems  to 
be  a  case  of  identity,  as  when  I  judge  that  this 
pen  I  hold  in  my  hand  is  the  same  object  I  held 
in  my  hand  last  week,  or  that  it  maintains  its 
existence  in  an  unbroken  flow  of  a  present  per- 
ception, resolves  under  Hume's  analysis  into  a 
mere  succession  of  broken  and  distinct  acts  of 
consciousness.  What  we  mistakenly  judge  to  be 
identity  is  resolvable  into  two  facts,  (1)  a  rapid 
succession  of  separate  states  and,  (2)  the  close 
resemblance  of  these  states.  The  judgment  of 
identity  is,  therefore,  one  of  those  inevitable  il- 
lusions of  consciousness  which  common  sense 
takes  to  be  real.  The  application  is  sufficiently 
obvious.  The  judgment  of  objective  identity 
has  no  foundation  but  the  empirical  fact  of  a 
rapid  flow  of  a  plurality  of  states.  The  same 
rapid  flow  is  the  sole  fact  and  basis  of  the  judg- 
ment of  personal  identity;  insofar  as  it  seems 
to  assert  the  continued  existence  of  the  self  it  is 
a  fiction.  The  only  fact  is  the  rapid  succession 
of  subject-states.  The  self  loses  its  stand  in  be- 
ing, therefore,  and  becomes  a  mere  passing 
phenomenon  of  an  empirical  flux.  Now,  Hume 
may  be  taken  as  the  chief  prosecuting  attorney 
in  the  case  of  empiricism  versus  a  real  and  per- 
durable soul  in  self.  But  he  has  a  very  able  as- 
sistant in  William  James,  who  introduces  what 


100       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

he  conceives  to  be  important  new  evidence  in 
favor  of  the  empirical  conclusion.  We  may  con- 
cede, he  says,  that  there  is  in  consciousness  the 
idea  or  thought  of  a  unitary  and  perdurable  self 
which  is  the  permanent  subject  of  all  our  chang- 
ing experiences.  But  this  idea  or  thought  is  it- 
self momentary  and  perishable.  While  it  lives, 
it  performs  the  office  of  a  real  subject.  When 
it  passes,  however,  it  transmits  its  self -content 
as  an  inheritance  to  the  thought  that  succeeds 
it,  which  thus  becomes  its  residuary  legatee. 
We  have  here  an  interesting  phase  of  the  Hindu 
doctrine  of  Karma;  only,  in  this  case  it  is  not 
the  evil  destiny  alone  that  is  transmitted.  But, 
like  the  doctrine  of  Karma  itself,  in  order  to 
escape  contradiction,  it  must  concede  the  point 
of  continued  existence.  It  is  impossible  to 
imagine  the  legacy  of  the  dead  self-thought  as 
leaping  the  gulf  of  absolute  extinction  to  the 
new  self-thought  that  comes  into  existence  on 
the  other  side. 

Now,  if  I  were  the  attorney  for  the  defense, 
I  would  endeavor  to  show  that  the  empirical 
argument  owes  its  cogency  to  the  fact  that  it 
has  been  blind  to  one  very  important  piece  of 
data.  When  Hume  fails  to  find  any  unitary 
self,  and  when  James  fails  to  find  any  self  that 
persists,  they  are  both  taking  the  attitude  of  ob- 
servers of  a  consciousness  that  cannot  present 
itself  as  an  object  of  scrutiny  except  in  the  form 
of  an  empirical  plurality  of  states.  For  the 
consciousness  under  question  can  only  be  that 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        101 

of  the  observer  himself.  In  order  to  make  it 
an  object,  it  must  be  projected  as  onto  a  can- 
vas, and  the  self-states  will  be  part  of  the  pro- 
jection. That  being  true  they  could  not  be 
otherwise  than  part  of  the  moving  show.  There 
is  no  permanence  about  any  part  of  a  moving 
picture  show,  but  the  parts  succeed  one  another 
in  a  series  of  dissolving  views.  There  is,  how- 
ever, a  very  subtle  fallacy  involved  in  this  whole 
method  of  dealing  with  the  subject.  In  order  to 
project  the  contents  of  consciousness  onto  a 
screen  so  that  they  may  be  observed,  there 
must  be  an  observer  left  behind  and  that  ob- 
server will  be  the  real  subject  of  the  inspection 
and  the  judgments  that  are  pronounced.  What 
about  this  back-standing  subject  of  all  the  ob- 
servations ?  It  will  seem  almost  inevitable  that, 
if  Mr.  Hume  objectifies  his  inner  consciousness, 
his  self-states  will  be  thrown  out  with  the  others 
and  they  will  all  seem  to  be  but  moments  in  a 
passing  show.  But  what  about  Mr.  Hume  him- 
self? Is  he  also  a  passing  moment  in  the  show? 
And,  if  so,  what  is  the  possible  value  of  his 
judgment?  It  is  self-evident  that,  if  the  world 
is  to  be  judged  a  passing  show,  the  standpoint 
of  the  judgment  itself  must  be  permanent,  for  it 
is  only  in  relation  to  a  fixed  point  that  anything 
can  be  in  the  state  of  passing.  The  truth  of  the 
matter  is,  that  it  is  only  when  the  real  subject 
has  abstracted  itself  from  the  situation  and  has 
become  the  observer  of  what  we  may  call  the 
empirical  self,  that  the  self  seems  to  lose  its 


102        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

permanence  and  sinks  into  the  flux  of  existence. 
In  this  case,  its  judgments  are  true,  since  the 
empirical  self  is  a  phenomenon  of  the  perishable 
aspect  of  the  soul's  life.  But  its  judgments  be- 
come false  if  they  are  supposed  to  qualify  the 
self  that  is  the  subject  of  them  and  pronounces 
them.  To  this  back-standing  subject  of  judg- 
ments, the  term  epistemological  self  has  been 
applied.  I  have  no  quarrel  with  this  designa- 
tion, if  it  means  the  self  that  knows  in  any  real 
situation.  But  it  ought  to  be  observed  that  it  is 
the  same  self  that,  also,  feels  and  wills.  The 
empiricist  has  simply  left  the  real  self  out  of 
view  in  his  reasonings,  while,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  has  been  because  he  has  used  it  that  he 
has  been  able  to  reach  any  conclusions  at  all. 

Now  the  loss  of  the  soul  in  the  modern  world 
is  due,  in  part,  to  the  empirical  blindness  I  have 
been  trying  to  expose.  But  it  is  due,  in  part 
also,  to  another  cause  of  a  different  order. 
When  the  traditional  slavery  of  mediaevalism 
was  broken  and  the  modern  world  set  out  on  the 
path  of  free  inquiry,  its  problem  was  nothing 
less  than  the  rediscovery  of  both  the  inner  and 
the  outer  world.  The  mediaeval  system  found 
no  place  for  first  hand  inquiry  into  either  the 
nature  of  man  or  that  of  the  world.  The  entire 
body  of  orthodox  knowledge  was  defined  in 
terms  of  tradition  and  authority.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  there  were  not  original  searchers 
for  the  truth,  like  the  mystics  and  scientists; 
but  these  were  outsiders  and,  if  not  directly  un- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       103 

der  the  ban,  were  regarded  as  objects  of  sus- 
picion. When  the  bonds  of  tradition  could  no 
longer  hold  and  the  mind  of  man  freed  itself 
from  the  restraints  of  authority,  it  acted  logic- 
ally when  it  threw  out,  provisionally,  at  least, 
as  in  the  case  of  Descartes,  all  the  content  of 
the  old  culture  and  set  out  on  the  task  of  build- 
ing up  a  new  knowledge  and  culture  by  means 
of  methods  of  original  and  first  hand  inquiry. 
The  result  of  this  was  the  fact  that  both  nature 
and  man  were  regarded  as  unknown  realms  and 
the  modern  mind  had  on  its  hands  the  discovery 
or  the  rediscovery  of  both  the  outer  and  the  in- 
ner worlds.  The  record  of  the  way  in  which  this 
great  task  has  been  prosecuted  includes  the  his- 
tory of  both  philosophy  and  science.  To  pass 
over  all  details,  we  may  say  that  to  philosophy 
and  psychology  fell  the  task  of  explaining  the 
inner  world  of  man's  nature,  while  that  of  the 
outer  realm  or  the  outer  world  fell  to  the  lot  of 
the  physical  sciences.  I  shall  only  briefly  allude 
to  the  fact  that,  while  philosophy  has  made 
some  splendid  achievements  in  its  researches 
into  the  inner  world,  yet  it  has  been  surpassed 
beyond  compare  by  the  progress  of  the  sciences. 
The  dominance  of  the  concepts  of  the  physical 
sciences  over  the  minds  of  men  has  been  almost 
overwhelming  and,  while  the  effects  have  on  the 
whole  been  good,  there  is  one  effect  of  this 
dominance  that  vitally  concerns  the  problem  of 
this  discussion.  So  completely  have  the  physi- 
cal  conceptions    and   categories    incorporated 


104        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

themselves  with  the  modern  ways  of  thinking 
that  the  average  mind  has  suffered  a  kind  of 
atrophy  of  the  spiritual  and  the  result  has  been 
not  so  much  a  positive  disbelief,  but  rather  an 
inability  to  believe,  in  the  inner  spiritual  world 
as  real.  This  inability  reveals  itself  in  the 
vogue  of  empiricism,  which  can  find  no  basis  for 
a  doctrine  of  a  real  self,  and  is  predetermined 
by  the  limits  of  its  data  to  a  sceptical  conclu- 
sion regarding  the  inner  spiritual  realm  and  its 
objects.  To  this  is  no  doubt  largely  due  the 
fact  that  through  its  blindness  to  spiritual  fact 
the  modern  mind  may  be  said  to  have  gained  the 
whole  world  of  outer  and  physical  reality  at  the 
cost  of  losing  its  own  soul.  The  task,  there- 
fore, which  the  friend  of  the  spiritual  has  on 
his  hand  is  that  of  the  revival  of  the  lapsed 
sense  of  spiritual  reality  and  the  re-discovery 
of  the  soul. 

Let  me  say  then  in  a  word,  that  the  object  of 
the  preceding  lectures  of  the  course  has  been 
to  contribute  something  to  the  revival  of  the 
lapsed  sense  of  spiritual  reality.  If  man  is  by 
virtue  of  his  constitution  a  religious  being  in 
the  profound  sense  that  his  perception  of 
spiritual  realities  adds  a  new  dimension  to  his 
consciousness  and  transforms  all  the  activities 
of  his  nature ;  if  it  be  true  that  his  spiritual  in- 
heritance is  so  deep  that  to  take  it  from  him 
would  virtually  relegate  him  to  an  existence  be- 
low the  human  type ;  if  the  activity  by  which  he 
knows  the  smallest  detail  of  knowledge  or  by 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       105 

which  he  achieves  the  smallest  result  in  life  be 
such  that  its  motive  can  be  completely  satisfied 
only  in  the  grounding  of  its  human  existence 
in  the  divine  life ;  then  the  reality  of  the  spirit- 
ual can  be  no  longer  in  question  and  with  the 
development  of  this  insight  the  sense  of  the  re- 
ality of  the  soul  will  grow  from  more  to  more. 
Making  bold  then  to  use  the  insight  we  have 
acquired  in  dealing  with  the  problem  of  the 
soul  or  real  self,  I  think  you  will  be  ready  to  go 
with  me  in  the  following  argument.  The  as- 
sumption of  empiricism  that  there  is  only  one 
order  of  reality,  the  empirical,  is  false,  since  it 
cannot  account  for  irrefutable  facts  of  con- 
sciousness. There  are  two  orders  of  reality, 
one,  the  empirical,  the  other  we  may  call  the 
real  or  rational.  The  presence  of  these  two 
orders  will  be  found  to  be  involved  in  any  act 
of  cognition.  Take,  for  example,  the  cognition 
of  a  Greek  temple.  The  cognition  itself  as  an 
experience  was  momentary;  but,  if  you  are 
asked  in  connection  with  it  the  question,  does 
the  temple  exist,  you  know  that  the  question 
goes  beyond  your  cognition  as  a  conscious  ex- 
perience. It  means  does  the  temple  continue 
when  you  are  not  looking  at  it  or  thinking  about 
it;  and,  when  you  consider  this,  you  find  that 
what  the  questioner  really  wishes  to  know  is 
whether  the  temple  belongs  to  an  order  of  ex- 
istence that  is  different  from  your  perceptions ; 
or  is  altogether  a  phenomenon  of  your  percep- 
tions and  shares  the  fortunes  of  their  order. 


106       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

When  you  further  consider  the  question,  you 
find  that  it  involves  something  still  more  pro- 
found. The  order  of  your  perceptions  is  a 
broken  one  and  presents  many  gaps :  it  is  made 
up  of  momentary  and  perishable  experiences, 
so  that  were  you  to  take  the  Berkeleyan  posi- 
tion, esse  est  per  dpi,  you  would  not  be  able  to 
escape  the  logic  of  it  but  would  conclude  that 
the  Greek  temple  is  wholly  an  affair  of  your 
personal  consciousness.  You  know,  however, 
that  the  questioner  will  be  satisfied  with  no  such 
subjective  answer.  What  he  has  in  mind  in 
putting  his  question  about  the  existence  of  the 
Greek  temple  is  an  order  of  reality  different 
from  the  empirical  order  of  perceptions;  an 
order  that  is  unbroken  and  perdurable,  so  that 
the  temple  has  had  a  continuous  being.  Now 
the  appeal  has  been  here  to  the  empirically  un- 
seen: to  that  which  transcends  the  empirical 
and  at  the  same  time  grounds  its  object  by  giv- 
ing it  a  real  status  in  being.  Turning  now  to 
the  problem  of  the  self,  we  find  the  same  dual 
distinction  necessary  to  any  adequate  doctrine. 
The  question  regarding  any  individual,  Does  he 
exist,  or  has  he  a  soul?  will  involve  the  dis- 
tinction between  what  we  may  call  his  empirical 
and  his  real  self.  The  empirical  self  will  be  the 
self  considered  as  a  phenomenon  of  the  empiri- 
cal order.  We  have  seen  that  the  sceptical 
empiricist  has  smooth  sailing  so  long  as  we  per- 
mit him  to  play  his  game  of  the  one  order.  The 
self  may  be  projected  then  as  part  of  a  moving 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        107 

panorama  and  will  be  perishable  like  all  the 
other  parts.  But  when  you  search  for  his  real 
self  and  find  it  not  in  the  show  itself,  but  find  it 
identical  with  the  deeper  point  to  which  the 
show  is  a  contemplated  object,  you  will  then  be 
in  a  position  to  understand  the  deeper  meaning 
of  the  question.  The  real  self  will  be  that  which 
remains  identical  with  a  fixed  point  of  contem- 
plation when  all  that  is  empirical  and  objectifi- 
able  has  been  projected  into  the  picture.  This 
will  be  the  self  that  the  questioner  will  imply 
when  he  asks,  does  he  exist,  or  has  he  a  soul! 
There  is,  then,  another  self  that  is  implicit  in 
the  empirical  as  possessing  qualities  that  the 
empirical  self  does  not  possess  and  which  are, 
in  fact,  the  opposites  of  the  qualities  of  the  em- 
pirical self. 

What,  then,  are  these  qualities?  In  the  first 
place  a  quality  of  the  empirical  arises  from  the 
fact  that  all  its  groundings  are  resolvable  into 
pluralistic  elements.  There  is  an  empirical 
self,  but  it  is  a  dissolving  momentary  grouping 
and  lapses  into  the  stream ;  but  the  real  self  is 
a  unity  that  is  not  thus  resolvable.  There  are 
no  seams  in  the  garment  of  the  real  self.  This 
is  what  constitutes  it  a  real  rather  than  an  em- 
pirical fact.  The  whole  validity  of  the  empiri- 
cal perception  depends  on  the  fact  that  it  is  re- 
lated to  a  unitary  point  of  view  which  is  not  in- 
fected with  plurality.  This  is  necessarily  true 
whether  we  can  understand  it  or  not.  Again 
the  moments  of  the  empirical  are  perpetually 


108        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

losing  their  identity  and  passing  into  something 
else,  whereas  the  real  self  is  only  conceived  to 
be  real  as  it  maintains  itself  from  thus  passing 
into  something  not  itself.  The  real  in  experi- 
ence is  identical,  from  this  point  of  view,  with 
the  stable ;  with  that  which  is  its  unbroken  self. 

When  we  consider  the  deeper  facts  of  knowl- 
edge, we  will  find  the  conclusions  reached  above 
confirmed  by  every  part  of  it.  For,  as  I  have 
already  shown,  no  act  of  knowledge  completes 
itself  and  obtains  full  cognitive  value  except 
by  appealing  to  some  order  that  is  more  stable 
and  unbroken ;  that  is,  more  substantial  than  the 
perceptual  order  of  which  it,  as  a  subjective  ex- 
perience, forms  a  moment.  In  every  act ;  in  the 
cognition  of  a  thing  as  something  more  than  a 
mere  plexus  of  perishable  qualities;  in  the 
judgment  of  identity,  which  is  involved  in  rec- 
ognition, in  which  an  unbroken  order  of  exist- 
ence is  affirmed;  in  the  immediate  and  mediate 
processes  of  reasoning,  which  consist  in  their 
ontological  sense  in  binding  that  which  in  itself 
is  particular  and  unstable  to  an  order  of  being 
that  is  one  and  unbroken ; — in  short,  there  is  no 
act  of  knowledge  that  does  not  reveal  the  same 
inner  motive.  The  process  of  objective  knowl- 
edge may  then  be  represented  as  a  movement  in 
which  the  subject-known  is  continually  passing 
from  an  empirical  order  which  is  plural,  un- 
stable and  broken,  to  a  rational  order  of  exist- 
ence that  is  unitary,  stable  and  unbroken. 

Much  more  when  we  turn  our  attention  to  the 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        109 

world  of  consciousness,  do  we  find  the  same 
thing  to  be  true.  What  we  call  the  empirical 
self  is  a  temporary  aggregation  of  states  con- 
stituting an  eddy  in  the  stream,  which  dis- 
charges a  temporary  function,  then  dissolves 
into  the  current.  If  this  be  the  whole  of  self- 
experience,  then  James'  representation  is  the 
only  one  logically  possible,  and  the  self  is  a 
momentary  and  perishable  thought,  as  unstable 
and  transitory  as  any  other  eletoent  in  the 
stream  of  existence.  But  when  we  look  deeper ; 
or  to  put  the  same  thing  in  different  words, 
when  we  think  from  the  standpoint  of  the  self 
that  is  pronouncing  the  judgments,  it  becomes 
clear  that  the  passing  of  the  empirical  self  can 
become  a  fact  of  knowledge  only  as  a  pronounce- 
ment of  a  subject-known,  that  does  not  pass  but 
speaks  from  a  durable  point  of  existence.  If 
this  be  true,  and  I  can  see  no  tenable  position 
from  which  it  can  be  gainsaid,  then,  the  way  to 
a  doctrine  of  a  rational  and  stable  self  as  the 
real  subject  of  experience  is  made  clear.  The 
act  in  which  we  affirm  our  own  identity,  as  well 
as  the  act  in  which  we  affirm  the  phenomenal 
character  of  the  empirical  self,  is  the  act  of  a 
knower  that  itself  transcends  the  empirical  and 
identifies  itself  with  the  rational  and  abiding. 

Taking  this  as  established,  let  us  now  con- 
sider, as  briefly  as  possible,  what  are  the  funda- 
mental attributes,  or  to  use  the  Kantian  term, 
categories,  of  the  real  self.  In  a  former  lec- 
ture, we  had  occasion  to  draw  a  distinction  be- 


110       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

tween  the  two  categories  of  self-existence  and 
self-activity.  This  was  done  for  the  purpose  of 
showing  that,  while  self -existence  cannot  be  af- 
firmed of  anything  but  the  ground  of  all  ex- 
istence, self-activity  may  be  a  property  of  a 
being  that  is  immediately  conscious  of  its  de- 
pendence on  its  ground.  For  self-activity  im- 
plies simply  the  power  of  initiative  arising  out 
of  the  self -determining  character  of  its  actions. 
The  concept  of  self-determination  will  be  con- 
sidered more  in  detail  in  a  later  lecture;  here 
we  will  content  ourselves  with  the  statement 
that  self-activity  involves  the  initiative  of  an 
action  that  originates  with  ourselves  and  is  not 
determined  by  other.  That  the  subject  of  ex- 
perience possesses  this  power  is  borne  out  not 
only  by  the  testimony  of  self  consciousness  but, 
also,  by  the  consideration  that  the  only  alterna- 
tive to  initiative  is  passivity,  whereas  the  no- 
tion of  a  subject  of  action  is  contradictory  to 
the  notion  of  passivity.  We  could  define  a  sub- 
ject of  action  as  that  which  initiates  the  action 
by  making  it  its  own.  The  definition  would  be 
true  whether  the  proposed  act  originated  with 
the  given  subject  or  was  originated  by  another 
and  simply  received  the  stamp  of  its  own  en- 
dorsement. In  both  instances,  the  subject  is 
self-active.  Now  in  this  sense  that  its  acts  only 
become  its  own  by  virtue  of  its  own  endorse- 
ment we  call  the  real  subject  of  experience  self- 
active.  It  could  be  shown  that  not  only  does 
this  notion  of  a  real  subject  of  experience  in- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       111 

volve  self-activity,  but,  also,  that  this  is  in- 
volved in  the  notion  of  responsibility.  For  we 
are  responsible  for  actions  only  so  far  forth  as 
we  own  them;  that  is,  put  the  initial  stamp  of 
our  endorsement  upon  them.  The  so-called 
refutations  of  the  self -activity  of  the  subject 
of  experience  owe  their  entire  force  to  the  fact 
that  their  application  is  limited  to  the  empirical 
self.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  a  subject  that  is 
constantly  dissolving  into  the  stream  of  con- 
tingency can  be  the  bearer  of  a  function  so  dig- 
nified as  that  of  self -activity.  Besides,  the  logic 
seems  to  be  unassailable  that  what  is  purely 
phenomenal  cannot  be  conceived  as  exercising 
any  real  agency.  If,  however,  we  refuse  to 
limit  our  view  to  the  empirical  and  identify  the 
real  self  with  the  subject  that  pronounces  the 
judgments  on  the  empirical  situation,  it  will 
then  be  clear  that  the  value  of  the  empirical 
judgments  themselves  will  be  conditioned  on 
other  judgments  proceeding  from  a  standpoint 
that  transcends  the  empirical.  Taking  it  as 
established  then  that  self-activity  must  be 
ascribed  to  the  real  subject  of  experience  as  the 
form  of  its  agency,  let  us  go  on  to  the  question 
of  other  essential  attributes.  We  do  not  need 
to  dwell  altogether  on  a  group  of  attributes  of 
which  we  have  had  something  to  say  in  former 
lectures;  the  categories  of  unity,  stability  and 
perdurability,  which  inhere  in  the  very  concep- 
tions of  a  subject  that  transcends  the  empirical 
stream  and  is  able  to  judge  its  phenomena.    Let 


112       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

us  ask  the  question,  how  is  it  possible  for  us  to 
know  and  judge  that  some  things  are  empirical ; 
that  is,  mere  appearance,  unstable  and  pass- 
ing,— except  from  the  standpoint  of  a  judg- 
ment that  is  not  affected  by  such  contingency? 
That  the  subject  that  issues  the  non-empirical 
judgment  is  itself  non-empirical  follows  with- 
out question.  That  a  subject  which  utters  judg- 
ments that  are  unitary, — that  are  stable  and 
that  perdure,  is  itself  unitary,  stable  and  per- 
durable, is  equally  beyond  question ;  otherwise, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  regard  the  real  self 
that  is  the  subject  of  the  unphenomenal  judg- 
ments as  a  duplicate  of  the  empirical,  and  the 
left  hand  would  thus  tear  down  what  the  right 
hand  had  builded. 

There  are,  however,  certain  categories  of  the 
real  subject  of  experience,  so  fundamental  to  its 
unphenomenal  character  that  they  must  be 
treated  with  more  detail.  These  are  individu- 
ality, personality  and  personal  identity.  It 
might  be  argued  that  what  is  self-active,  will, 
also,  be  individual,  and  the  conclusion  would  be 
hard  to  refute.  But  what  we  propose  here  is, 
first,  to  determine,  as  far  as  possible,  the  con- 
cept of  individuality.  If  we  say  that  the  in- 
dividual is  not  decomposable  into  parts,  we  ut- 
ter an  important  but  identical  proposition.  If, 
however,  we  say  that  an  individual  is  an  ex- 
istence that  maintains  its  own  integrity  and  is 
not  broken  into  by  other  existences,  we  utter  a 
proposition  that  follows  immediately  from  the 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION       113 

notion  of  individuality  itself.  When  we  say, 
further,  that  the  individual  is  one:  That  it  is 
not  broken  into  by  change ;  that  it  is  perdurable, 
we  utter  propositions  some  of  which,  at  least, 
are  mediate  and  not  immediately  certain.  For 
example,  the  judgment  of  unity  may  be  taken  as 
a  definition  of  individuality  from  a  certain  point 
of  view ;  but  the  propositions  that  the  individual 
is  not  broken  into  by  change  and  that  it  is  per- 
durable, are  not  self-evident.  The  first  propo- 
sition, that  the  individual  is  not  broken  into  by 
change  is  not  obvious  until  we  have  looked  at 
it  on  its  obverse  side  and  have  perceived  that 
change  itself  has  no  significance  except  as  it  is 
related  to  the  permanent  and  unbroken.  The 
individual  in  order  to  be  a  subject  of  change 
and  to  be  aware  of  change  must  itself  be  un- 
broken and  aware  of  its  integrity.  We  do  not 
mean  here  that  individuality  excludes  change, 
like  the  being  of  the  Eleatics ;  rather  that  change 
may  enter  into  it  without  breaking  its  continu- 
ity. If  we  are  able  to  grasp  the  concept  that 
something  may  change  through  and  through  and 
yet  maintain  its  being  unbroken,  we  will  have 
mastered  the  secret  of  individuality.  The  indi- 
viduality of  the  self  is  the  respect  in  which  it  is 
unbroken  by  the  changes  of  its  experience. 
Other  aspects  of  individuality  are  expressed  in 
the  fact  that,  like  the  Leibnitzian  monad,  its 
life-activity  is  internal  rather  than  external; 
another  way  of  saying  that  the  individual  is 
self-active  and  not  determined  from  without. 


114       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

From  another  angle  individuality  will  express 
the  substance  of  a  thing, — that  by  virtue  of 
which  it  transcends  the  empirical  concept  of  a 
bunch  or  plexus  of  perishable  qualities.  We 
are  justified  in  concluding,  I  think,  that  when 
we  say  that  the  subject  of  experience  is  a  real 
individual,  we  have  ascribed  to  it  the  attributes 
of  unphenomenal  and  stable  existence ;  we  have 
afl5rmed  its  unity,  its  integrity  and  its  perdura- 
bility. 

When  we  say  that  the  real  subject  is  per- 
sonal, we  ascribe  to  it  individuality,  plus  some 
further  characterizations.  To  be  a  person  is  to 
be  an  individual;  but  the  concept  of  person  is 
richer  than  that  of  individual.  When  we  speak 
of  individuality,  we  have  in  mind  certain  un- 
phenomenal attributes  of  being;  we  have  in 
mind  the  self  for  example,  not  in  its  aspect  of 
change  and  plurality  but  rather  in  that  of  its 
unity  and  permanence  of  existence.  But,  when 
we  speak  of  personality,  we  have  in  mind,  not 
simply  the  unphenomenal  character  of  the  self, 
but  rather  the  self  as  a  concrete,  as  a  synthesis 
of  the  real  and  the  phenomenal.  It  is  this  syn- 
thetic view  that  is  the  source  of  the  richness  of 
personality.  Let  us  take,  for  example,  here 
the  profound  conception  of  personality  adopted 
by  the  early  Christian  thinkers;  that  of  the 
Logos;  a  conception  that  combined  the  notion 
of  a  permanent  substance  or  individual  with 
that  of  utterance  or  expression.  In  its  sub- 
stance or  unbroken  individuality,  or  being,  it  is 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        115 

one,  but  in  its  phenomenal  or  empirical  expres- 
sion or  manifestation  it  is  plural.  Now  I  am 
not  about  to  ask  your  participation  in  a  theo- 
logical discussion,  but  rather  to  assist  me  in  ab- 
stracting the  core  of  insight  from  this  profound 
doctrine  of  theology.  Personality  is  the  indi- 
vidual nature  of  a  man  viewed  from  the  side 
of  its  empirical  expression.  Personality  is 
plural  and  changeable,  so  that  the  total  impres- 
sion of  it  will  be  that  of  a  rich  variety;  but  it 
will  not  represent  simply  a  heterogeneity  of 
change.  There  are  certain  genuine  forms  of 
psychic  activity  which  determine  the  funda- 
mental types  of  personal  expression.  I  mean 
the  three  first  forms  of  conscious  activity,  ex- 
pressed in  the  terms,  thought,  feeling  and  vo- 
lition, or  whatever  more  modern  terms  the  psy- 
chologists may  have  invented  for  these  forms 
of  mental  action.  We  will  express  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  personality,  I  think,  if  we  regard 
it  as  the  individual  nature  of  a  being  expressing 
itself  in  any  of  the  threefold  forms  of  psychic 
activity,  thinking,  feeling  or  willing ;  or  in  some 
blend  of  the  three.  With  us  the  types,  the  vari- 
ations, may  be  practically  infinite,  so  that  what 
is  called  the  play  of  personality  is  more  than  a 
figure.  The  significant  fact  about  personality, 
for  us  here,  is  its  synthetic  character:  it  is  a 
unitary  nature  expressing  itself  in  a  plurality 
of  forms. 

The  third  category  of  our  list  is  in  many  re- 
spects the  most  significant  of  them  all.    No  one 


116       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

doubts  that  personality  is  an  attribute  of  man, 
although  there  may  be  a  variety  of  doctrines  as 
to  its  nature.  But  there  is  no  such  unity  re- 
garding personal  identity.  In  order  to  develop 
any  adequate  doctrine  of  personal  identity,  it  is 
necessary  for  us  to  keep  in  mind  the  distinction 
between  the  real  and  the  empirical.  This  we 
have  found  to  be  a  distinction  of  cardinal  im- 
port in  every  field  of  existence.  From  the  stand- 
point of  pure  empiricism,  there  is  no  adequate 
ground  for  maintaining  any  real  identity  of  the 
self.  The  empirical  self  as  James  has  con- 
tended, does  not  persist  but  is  a  perishable 
thought  that  dissolves  into  the  flux,  leaving  self- 
hood to  be  taken  care  of  by  another  thought  as 
perishable  as  itself.  It  is  only  from  the  stand- 
point of  one  who  recognizes  the  unphenomenal 
character  of  the  real  self  that  there  seem  to  be 
sufficient  grounds  for  maintaining  the  real  con- 
tinuity of  the  perishable  self.  This  will  be 
clear,  if  we  consider  John  Locke's  doctrine  of 
personal  identity.  He  seems  to  regard  person- 
ality itself  as  a  forensic  term  employed  by  the 
jurists  to  fix  legal  responsibility  for  acts.  Psy- 
chologically, he  regards  it  as  a  matter  of  con- 
sciousness, so  that  the  maintenance  of  the  same 
person  would  depend  on  the  continuity  of  con- 
sciousness. If  a  man  should  forget  himself,  he 
would  become  another  person.  But,  while  this 
may  be  true  in  a  measure,  as  the  modern  in- 
vestigations into  plural  and  alternating  person- 
alities have  shown;  yet  the  significant  fact  is 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        117 

not  that  a  man  may  forget  himself,  but  that 
having  done  so  he  may,  perhaps  after  long 
lapses,  come  back  to  himself  and  re-establish  an 
unbroken  thread  of  continuity.  The  common 
fact  of  memory  is  one  that  cannot  be  explained 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  empirical  conscious- 
ness alone,  since  the  judgment  of  recognition  in 
memory  appeals  to  an  order  of  reality  that  is 
unbroken;  otherwise,  recognition  would  be  im- 
possible and  every  act  of  mind  would  be  a  fresh 
creation.  It  is  impossible  to  take  time  here  to 
develop  this  position  in  order  to  bring  out  all 
its  implications;  but  memory-acts,  in  common 
with  all  cognitive  acts,  make  a  common  appeal 
to  an  unbroken  order  of  existence.  In  this  case, 
the  unbroken  order  is  that  of  the  real  subject 
of  experience,  which  not  only  transcends  the 
empirical  order  but,  also,  grounds  it. 

We  pass  now  to  the  closing  topic  of  the  lec- 
ture; that  of  the  self  as  a  subject  of  religious 
experience.  It  is  vital  that  we  should  determine 
what  self  is  the  court  of  appeal  in  the  case  of 
religious  experience.  If  it  be  the  empirical  self, 
then  we  meet  the  difficulty  that  the  empirical 
self  is  too  transient  and  perishable  to  be  the 
bearer  of  a  religious  intuition  or  the  subject  of 
an  experience  that  binds  the  soul  of  man  to  the 
rock  of  the  immutable.  The  court  of  appeal 
must  be  the  real  self  which  as  an  individual  and 
perdurable  being  will  find  some  affinity  with 
that  which  appeals  to  the  sense  of  the  unitary 
and  abiding.     Now  we  have  seen  how  the  re- 


118       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ligious  consciousness  opens  up  in  the  soul  of 
man  the  insight  of  a  new  dimension  of  being. 
In  the  light  of  this  new  dimension  which  con- 
nects existence  with  its  self-existent  ground,  we 
have  seen  that  the  fundamental  relation  of  re- 
ligion to  the  whole  activity  of  man  is  made 
clear.  Not  only  does  it  appear  that  religion 
supplies  the  true  end  of  his  being  which  is  the 
salvation  of  his  soul.  But  what  is  even  more 
significant  here,  it  supplies  the  ontological  mo- 
tive of  all  his  activities,  so  that  whether  we  re- 
gard him  as  an  intellectual,  emotional  or  vo- 
litional being  the  mainspring  of  all  his  activi- 
ties is  found  in  the  common  and  persistent  im- 
pulse toward  the  self-existent  ground  of  being 
as  the  goal  of  all  endeavor.  Furthermore,  there 
is  an  insight  here  that  will  be  necessary  to  the 
completion  of  our  doctrine  of  the  self.  We  have 
been  led  to  the  distinction  between  the  empirical 
and  the  real  self  as  fundamental,  and  we  have 
found  that  the  real  self  must  be  conceived  as  a 
self -active  individual  subject  of  experience.  In 
ascribing  self-activity  to  the  soul  of  man,  we 
have  been  led  to  distinguish  between  self-ex- 
istence and  self-activity  and  have  recognized 
the  fact  that  the  self-activity  of  the  soul  does 
not  involve  its  self-existence.  At  the  basis  of 
the  soul-life  there  is  the  insight  into  the  tran- 
scendent ground,  the  spring  of  its  existence  and 
the  rock  on  which  it  rests.  What  I  wish  to  point 
out  here  in  conclusion  is  the  fact  that  it  is  only 
in  this  transcendent  insight;  in  this  three-di- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       119 

mensional  vision,  that  we  discover  the  datum 
that  is  needed  to  give  final  and  unconditional 
value  to  all  our  rational  conclusions.  For  the 
position  that  we  have  maintained  from  the  be- 
ginning- :  that  the  doctrine  of  selfhood  must  go 
beyond  the  limits  of  the  empirical  which  is 
broken  and  perishing,  and  must  find  the  concept 
of  the  real  self  in  that  which  is  unitary,  un- 
broken and  perdurable,  is  one  that  depends  for 
its  final  justification  on  the  insight  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness.  There  is  a  sense  in  which 
the  fruits  of  all  our  labors  are  dropping  from 
us,  and  the  non-empirical  self  is  in  danger  of 
dropping  into  the  stream  of  the  empirical  and 
being  lost.  If  there  were  not  the  three-dimen- 
sional consciousness  which  gives  the  insight  of 
religion,  the  soul,  although  it  is  a  self-active 
individual,  would  have  no  sense  of  its  self-ex- 
istent ground.  The  logic  of  empiricism  would 
be  constantly  prevailing  against  it  and  it  would 
be  incessantly  facing  the  annihilation  of  its 
dearest  and  most  fundamental  hopes.  But  the 
three-dimensional  insight  of  religion  supplies  it 
with  the  light  that  ** never  was  on  land  or  sea" 
that  enables  it  to  lay  hold  of  the  self-existent 
and  complete  the  story  of  its  life  with  the  vision 
of  that  which  has  life  in  itself.  Or  to  put  the 
truth  in  different  words :  The  soul  of  man  can 
be  sure  of  its  own  unbroken  and  permanent  ex- 
istence only  when  it  sees  it  in  the  light  of  its 
relation  to  its  divine  spring.  This  will  mean 
that  it  is  only  the  self-existent  principle  of  ex- 


120       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

istence  that  imparts  to  the  soul  of  man  its  own 
permanent  individuality  and  it  is  only  in  the 
light  of  the  ground-intuitions  of  religion  that 
the  soul  obtains  a  clear  insight  into  its  own  na- 
ture and  destiny. 

Lecture  VI.    The  Agency  of  Man 

The  problem  of  this  lecture  is  that  of  the 
agency  of  man,  and  the  special  question  will 
be  that  of  human  freedom.  The  chief  difficulty 
involved  in  the  discussions  of  this  subject  has 
arisen  from  the  presence  in  the  mind  of  the  in- 
vestigator of  some  predetermined  concept  of 
freedom.  This  has  rendered  the  problem,  ap- 
parently, so  hopeless  that  we  are  often  dis- 
posed, like  Milton,  to  relegate  it  to  the  angels 
along  with  the  problem  of  fore-ordination,  on 
the  ground  that  they  will  have  ample  leisure  for 
its  discussion.  If,  however,  we  do  not  dogma- 
tize on  the  subject  before  investigating  it,  and, 
if  we  can  hold  our  judgment  open  for  the  time, 
at  least,  it  may  be  that,  travelling  this  new  road, 
we  may  be  led  to  some  valuable  discoveries.  At 
the  outset,  therefore,  I  would  be  chary  of  com- 
mitting myself  or  you  to  any  statements  of  the 
question.  When  the  two  knights  quarreled 
about  the  color  of  the  shield  they  were  both 
right,  and  it  is  possible  that  two  parties,  at  op- 
posite ends  of  an  argument,  may  be  defending 
one  and  the  same  thing.  Most  men  will,  at 
times,   find    difficulty    squaring   their   abstract 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        121 

theory  with  the  theory  that  is  implied  in  their 
practice.    Much  of  the  perplexity  surrounding 
the  problem  of  freedom  arises,  without  doubt, 
from  the  fact  that  it  is,  in  some  respects,  more 
simple  than  is  ordinarily  supposed,  while,  in 
other  respects,  it  is  much  more  profound.    For 
example,  if  we  accept  the  testimony  of  con- 
sciousness as  final,  which  we  must  as  far  as  its 
testimony  goes,  as  I  hope  to  be  able  to  show, 
then  the  fact  of  freedom  is  very  simple ;  where- 
as, if  we  go  deeper  into  the  subject,  and  raise 
the  question  whether  the  action  of  man  has  not 
been  predetermined  in  such  a  way  that  he  is  not 
free  in  the  sense  which  his  consciousness  con- 
firms, we  will  find  that  a  very  deep  issue  has 
been  raised,  the  settling  of  which  may  baffle  our 
deepest  insights.    Instead,  then,  of  indulging  in 
premature  definitions,  or  even  statements  of  the 
question,  I  will  ask  your  leave  to  proceed  di- 
rectly to  the  consideration  of  a  negative  propo- 
sition;  namely,  that  human  agency  is  not  a 
form  of  mechanical  activity.     The  doctrine  of 
mechanical  determination  may  take  several  dif- 
ferent forms,  all  of  which  have  this  in  common, 
that  they  treat  the  relation  of  choice  to  its 
antecedent  as  an  external  relation,  which  may 
be  quantitatively  conceived,  if  not  definitely  de- 
termined.   The  relation  of  the  antecedent,  which 
we  may  call  motive,  to  the  choice  being  ex- 
ternal ;  the  motive,  as  a  force,  stands  outside  of 
the  subject  that  is  determined,  and  the  choice  is 
the  result  of  a  stronger  force  operating  upon  a 


122        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

weaker.    It  is  ordinarily  regarded  as  a  case  of 
natural  causation.     The  result  is  strictly  de- 
termined, and  there  is  no  more  place  for  free 
action  than  there  is  in  the  case  of  one  billiard 
ball  producing,  by  impact,  an  effect  in  another. 
When,  however,  we  analyze  the  situation  in  an 
act  of  choice,  we  find  that  it  cannot  be  externally 
represented;  that  A,  the  motive,  in  order  to 
produce  an  effect,  B,  in  the  agent,  must  give  up 
its  external  position,  and  become  a  feeling  or 
desire  in  the  consciousness  of  Y.    This  relates 
A  internally  to  all  the  other  states  of  Y,  which 
are  not  a  determinate  number  exercising  a  de- 
terminate force.     For  A,  like  any  other  form 
of  stimulus,   is  a  challenge  which  rouses  the 
memory  processes  in  an  effort  of  the  conscious- 
ness stimulated  to  pull  itself  together,  so  to 
speak,  for  the  present  occasion.    Let  the  recol- 
lected self  be  composed  of  N  states,  all  of  which 
will  blend  together  into  one  consciousness.    The 
state  A,  which,  let  us  say,  is  an  inducement  to 
steal,  will  blend  with  the  other  states,  and  there 
will  be,  as  a  result,  a  subject  that  will  feel  in- 
clined to  steal.     It  is  clear  that  the  situation 
cannot  be  mechanically  represented  since  the 
matter  in  hand  is  an  internal  transaction  in  a 
consciousness,  the  states  of  which  have  ceased 
to  exist  separately,  and  are  constantly  varying 
in  force,  according  to  the  states  with  which  they 
blend  or  stand  in  contrast.    If  the  states,  in  the 
restored  consciousness  with  which  the  desire  to 
steal  is  able  to  blend,  are  able,  in  combination, 


PHILOSOPHY  OP  RELIGION        123 

to  determine  the  whole  trend  of  the  conscious- 
ness that  decides,  then  we  will  feel  sure  that 
the  choice  of  theft  will  follow,  unless  some  in- 
hibitory motive  should,  in  the  meantime,  come 
in  and  redress  the  balance.     Now,  while  this 
analysis  shows  that  the  situation  is  not  mechan- 
ical, is  it  not  open  to  the  construction  of  being 
the  prevailing   of  the   stronger  consciousness 
over  the  weaker?    Or,  to  put  it  differently;  if 
we  represent  the  situation  as  that  of  a  struggle 
between  two  empirical  selves  as  to  which  should 
be  realized  in  this  instance,  may  it  not  be  in- 
terpreted as  the  succeeding  of  the  stronger  self, 
and  the  temporary  suppression  of  the  weaker 
self?    I  see  no  way  of  escaping  this  conclusion, 
unless  there  are  other  facts  not  yet  considered 
that  would  modify  the  situation.     That  there 
are  such  facts,  I  will  now  proceed  to  show.    In 
the  first  place,  the  strength  of  motives  are  sub- 
jectively determined  by  the  internal  character 
of  the  subject.    The  internal  nature  of  each  sub- 
ject is  a  selective  principle  which  expresses  it- 
self in  certain  motives,  desires  and  impulses. 
The  internal  character  of  a  lodestone  is  such 
that  it  will  attract  iron  filings,  but  will  have  no 
power  to  draw  wood  or  copper.    The  selective 
principle  here  may  be  expressed  as  follows ;  the 
lodestone  has  a  desire  for  iron,  a  latent  impulse 
to  seek  iron  which  will  be  aroused  when  iron 
comes  into  the  neighborhood,  but  will  be  dor- 
mant if  the  objects  are  of  wood.     Putting  it 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  iron,  we  may  say 


124       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

that  the  iron  has  latent  in  its  nature  a  desire 
for  the  magnet,  which  its  presence  and  attract- 
ing power  will  call  into  action,  but  that  there  is 
no  such  desire  in  wood  and  copper.  There  is 
a  subjective  principle  in  consciousness  analo- 
gous to  this  in  the  light  of  which  we  can  say  that 
the  strength  of  all  motives  is  to  be  expressed 
in  terms  of  evaluation  by  consciousness  itself. 
If  the  sexual  instinct  were  not  latent  in  man 
there  would  be  no  temptation  in  female  beauty. 
This  is  the  first  point.  The  second  is  a  deeper 
aspect  of  the  same  situation  that  is  revealed  in 
connection  with  deliberate  action.  It  is  present, 
but  not  so  obvious  in  action  that  is  spontaneous. 
The  fact  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  is  this ;  that, 
viewed  as  a  whole,  the  act  of  deliberation  is  one 
in  which  the  decision  is  held  up  until  the  con- 
scious nature  as  a  whole  has  an  opportunity  to 
put  its  valuation  on  the  factors  involved.  If 
A,  objectively,  may  be  the  knowledge  of  the 
combination  of  a  safe  in  which  valuable  stock 
is  locked  up,  it  is  clear  that  the  force  of 
the  internal  feeling  or  desire  to  steal  cannot  be 
determined  from  the  knowledge  itself,  but  will 
depend  for  its  force  altogether  on  the  internal 
assessment  of  it  by  the  person  who  possesses 
the  knowledge,  and  that  this  will  vary  indefi- 
nitely at  different  times  in  the  life  of  that  in- 
dividual. These  facts  will,  I  think,  cause  us  to 
reverse  our  judgment,  and  say  that  no  objec- 
tive motive  possesses  any  power  over  a  con- 
scious being  that  is  not  given  to  it  by  the  in- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        125 

ternal  assessment  of  the  subject  who  has  cog- 
nizance of  it.  This,  together  with  the  fact  that 
this  assessment  varies  infinitely,  will  wholly  dis- 
credit the  quantitative  measurement,  and  will 
convince  us  that  we  must  seek  the  coefficient 
of  choice  in  the  nature  of  the  choosing  subject, 
and  not  in  the  force  we  may  ascribe  to  any  ob- 
jective motive. 

If,  now,  we  accept  this  as  the  final  refutation 
of  the  mechanical  theory  of  choice,  the  ground 
will  be  clear  for  some  further  advances.  If  we 
scrutinize  a  process  that  leads  to  and  deter- 
mines choice  or  action,  we  will  find  that,  psycho- 
logically, it  is  teleological  rather  than  mechani- 
cal. A  mechanical  process  is  one  from  which 
all  selection,  prevision  or  internal  guidance 
has  been  eliminated.  The  forces  push  for- 
ward, however  definite  may  be  their  path, 
blindly,  so  far  as  any  internal  vision  is  con- 
cerned, and  fatalistically,  as  far  as  any  purpose 
or  end  may  be  concerned. 

'^The  ball  no  question  asks  of  ayes  or  noes, 
But  here  and  there  where  strikes  the  player 
goes." 

But,  if  we  scrutinize  a  choice  situation,  we  will 
find  that  it  is  motived  from  beginning  to  end  by 
a  prevision  of  the  end,  which  motive,  at  first  a 
point  of  selectiveness,  becomes  progressively  a 
prevision  of  end,  a  purpose  and  a  goal  of  reali- 
zation, where  the  mechanical  agent  is  blind,  like 
the   ball,   and   goes,   fatalistically,   where   the 


126        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

player  strikes;  the  psychical  agent  is  seeing, 
and  goes  intelligently,  to  the  realization  of  a 
prevised  goal.  When  an  action  is  thus  intelli- 
gently informed,  we  call  it  self-determined  to 
distinguish  it  from  the  mechanical  type,  which 
is  determination  by  other. 

We  are  ready  now  to  return  to  our  question 
of  freedom,  and  I  think  we  will  be  prepared  for 
the  conclusion  that  freedom,  whatever  it  may 
be,  will  be  identical  with  self-determination. 
We  mean  by  that,  not  that  all  self-determina- 
tion is  free  determination,  for  that  would  be 
the  simple  conversion  of  a  proposition  in  A,  but 
that  all  acts  of  freedom  will  fall  under  the  cate- 
gory of  self-determination.  If,  then,  we  distin- 
guish between  the  form  and  the  substance  of 
freedom,  we  will  be  justified  in  saying  that  all 
acts  that  are  self-determined  are  formally  free. 
How,  then,  are  we  to  distinguish  the  substance 
of  freedom  from  its  form?  This  will  lead  us 
along  another  line  of  investigation.  At  the  out- 
set, we  may  say  that,  while  consciousness  is  an 
adequate  witness  to  the  fact  that  we  are  form- 
ally free  from  any  constraint,  there  are  condi- 
tions of  real  freedom  that  go  beyond  its  vision. 
For  example,  if  the  question  is  not  as  to  present 
determination,  but  takes  the  form  of  a  question 
of  pre-determination,  we  are  plainly  facing  an 
issue  that  an  appeal  to  consciousness  or  to  the 
psychic  form  of  human  choice  cannot  determine. 
I  do  not  wish  to  conceal  the  fact  that  the  grav- 
est issue  in  the  whole  question  of  freedom  is 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        127 

that  of  pre-determination.  Is  our  choice  pre- 
determined, and,  if  so,  in  what  way,  and  does 
this  militate  against  free  choice? 

In  dealing  with  this  phase  of  our  question, 
there  are  two  lines  of  consideration.  (1)  The 
bearing  of  the  forces  of  the  soul's  ordinary  life 
in  the  problem  of  its  choice,  and  (2)  the  bear- 
ing of  its  relation  to  God,  or  the  self-existent 
ground  of  its  existence,  or  the  nature  of  its  own 
agency.  If  we  consider  the  first  problem,  we 
are  brought  into  relation  with  the  forces  of  the 
world,  and  their  bearing  on  the  nature  of  the 
soul's  life  and  agency.  There  is  one  conclusion 
which  we  have  already  reached  that  will  simpli- 
fy the  problem.  It  has  been  made  clear  that  the 
agency  of  the  soul  is  not  mechanical  but  teleo- 
logical.  This  removes  the  mechanism  of  the 
world  from  any  direct  causal  part  in  determin- 
ing the  life  and  agency  of  the  soul.  If  the  soul 
of  man  is  vitally  connected  with  the  world-pro- 
cess, it  is  with  its  life  and  history.  It  is  the 
process  of  the  world  in  time ;  what  we  call  its 
development  in  time ;  to  which  the  history  of  the 
soul  is  vitally  related.  If,  then,  we  conceive 
the  soul  to  be  connected  with  the  world's  life, 
and  a  part  of  that  life,  we  will  have  before  us 
the  task  of  determining  the  part  which  these 
evolutionary  forces  have  played  and  continue  to 
play  in  constituting  it,  and  fixing  its  place  in  the 
life  system  to  which  it  belongs.  Now,  without 
attempting  to  determine  any  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, which  would  be  out  of  place  here,  the  fol- 


128        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

lowing  proposition  will,  I  think,  be  accepted  as 
true.  The  forces  that  determine  or  affect  the 
soul 's  life  will  be  inheritance,  environment,  and, 
as  a  subordinate  factor  in  the  latter,  what  is 
called  the  physical  habitat.  Let  us  allow  to 
these  forces  a  full  measure  of  agency  in  deter- 
mining the  nature  and  status  of  the  soul.  Let 
us  say,  for  example,  that  it  is  through  heredity 
that  the  soul  has  its  rootage  in  the  life  of  the 
world,  while,  in  heredity  taken  with  environ- 
ment, we  have  the  factors  that  enable  us  to  give 
the  natural  history  of  the  soul  as  a  product  and 
manifestation  of  the  world's  life.  Two  ques- 
tions may  be  asked,  when  all  the  claims  of  natu- 
ral agencies  have  been  satisfied.  (1)  Do  these 
forces  account  for  the  absolute  origin  of  the 
soul,  and  (2)  what  effect  do  they  have  on  the 
freedom  of  the  soul's  action?  In  order  to 
answer  any  of  these  questions,  we  must  form 
some  critical  concept  of  the  forces  we  call 
heredity  and  environment.  The  term  heredity  in 
the  popular  mind  bears  an  evil  repute,  since  the 
public  only  hears  of  it  in  connection  with  dis- 
ease or  the  transmission  of  criminal  tendencies, 
like  the  propensity  to  steal  in  the  Duke  family. 
But  it  is  clear  that  the  agency  of  such  a  princi- 
ple cannot  be  confined  to  what  the  Hindu  phi- 
losophy calls  Karma;  the  self -perpetuation  of 
evil ;  that  it  will  be  absolutely  indifferent  to  the 
good  and  evil,  and  will  transmit  both  with  equal 
facility.  In  other  words,  the  whole  genetic  stem 
of  its  existence,  the  soul  will  owe  to  the  princi- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        129 

pie  of  inheritance.  Heredity  will  be  a  faithful 
transmitter  of  whatever  be  given  to  it,  and  this 
will  be  true  whatever  theory  of  heredity  we  may 
espouse,  for  any  theory  accepts  the  principle, 
and  seeks  simply  to  determine  the  limits  within 
which  it  operates.  If,  then,  we  say  that  the 
business  of  heredity  is  impartial  transmission, 
it  will  be  clear  that  no  creative  function  can  be 
ascribed  to  it.  It  is  the  analogue  of  habit  in  the 
psychic  realm,  and,  like  habit,  its  sole  function 
is  that  of  conservation.  Passing  to  the  other 
factor,  environment,  leaving  out  of  view  the 
subordinate  influence  of  the  habitat;  it  will  be 
evident  that  in  relation  to  the  soul-life  of  man, 
the  environment  will  be  a  very  broad  and  signifi- 
cant factor.  It  will  be  clear,  also,  that,  while 
biologically  considered,  it  will  be  important  as 
a  factor  in  the  lower  life  of  the  soul,  yet,  in  its 
higher  life  in  the  human  stage,  its  psychological 
aspect  will  be  much  more  vital  in  its  bearing  on 
the  problems  of  our  inquiry.  For  the  environ- 
ment will  include  all  the  forces  and  agencies  of 
man's  own  civilization,  including  the  social, 
moral  and  religious ;  it  will  include  all  the  edu- 
cational agencies  that  bear  on  his  culture,  in- 
cluding his  science,  literature,  history  and  art. 
In  short,  the  whole  operation  of  the  environ- 
ment which  man  has  builded  about  himself  on 
the  basis  of  his  physical  surroundings.^  Now,  it 
is  clear  that  the  environment,  so  conceived,  will 
not  be  a  mere  conserver  of  riches  already  ac- 
cumulated, but  rather  a  stimulus  to  new  ad- 


130       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

vances  in  the  fields  of  achievement.  The  biolo- 
gist, in  considering  the  relation  of  the  organism 
to  these  forces  in  the  light  of  the  organic  re- 
action, calls  one  habit,  the  other  adaptation; 
the  organism  conserving  its  past  through  habit 
while  adaptation  is  its  way  of  taking  a  step  in 
advance  in  response  to  the  stimulus  of  the  en- 
vironment. 

From  this  point  of  view  I  think  we  will  be  in 
the  way  of  reaching  two  important  conclusions. 
The  first  will  bear  on  the  question  we  stated 
sometime  back,  as  to  whether  evolution  ac- 
counted for  the  absolute  origin  of  the  soul  or 
only  for  its  place  in  a  natural  scale  of  being.  If 
heredity  only  conserves  the  germ,  it  is  evident 
that  it  can  shed  no  light  on  the  origin  of  the 
organism  which  it  conserves.  This  is  so  obvi- 
ous as  to  require  no  further  elaboration.  In  re- 
gard to  the  environment  we  meet  a  somewhat 
different  situation.  Given  the  organism,  which 
may  be  a  germ  cell,  the  environmental  agencies, 
acting  with  heredity,  will  account  for  the  ad- 
vances in  organization  from  one  stage  of  de- 
velopment to  another.  If  now  we  apply  the 
name  evolution  to  the  combined  function  of 
these  agencies,  the  question  comes  up  in  the 
general  form  as  to  how  far,  if  at  all,  creative 
functions  may  be  ascribed  to  evolution.  This 
brings  us  at  once  face  to  face  with  the  opposite 
claims  of  the  two  prevailing  philosophies  of  the 
day — pre-formationism  and  eugenics.  The  pre- 
formationists  tell  us  that  not  only  is  the  germ- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       131 

cell  the  protagonist  in  the  drama  of  evolution 
but  that  it  must  be  regarded  as  a  little  micro- 
cosm which  contains  in  it  the  germ-forms  of 
all  that  is  to  unfold  from  it;  that  the  first  lion 
germ-cell  for  example  has  wrapped  up  in  it  all 
the  lion-germs  which  will  develop  all  the  lions 
that  are  to  succeed  it  to  the  oldest  generation. 
This  was  the  philosophy  held  by  the  early  bi- 
ologists of  the  seventeenth  century  and  that  ob- 
tained its  most  perfect  expression  in  the  mo- 
nadology  of  Leibnitz.  It  was  set  aside  by  Dar- 
win, and  the  opposing  doctrine  of  epigenesis  ob- 
tained vogue  until  recently  when,  as  my  friend 
and  former  colleague.  Professor  Conklin,  tells 
me,  the  biological  wind  has  set  in  an  opposite 
direction  and  the  ship  is  now  sailing  danger- 
ously close  to  the  Charybdis  of  preformation- 
ism.  The  theory  of  epigenesis  differs  from  pre- 
formationism  in  this  that  it  is  willing  to  concede 
only  an  irreducible  minimum  of  initiative  to  the 
germ-cell,  while  on  the  contrary  it  ascribes  a 
larger  and  more  creative  function  to  the  en- 
vironment. For  example,  while  it  finds  it  nec- 
essary to  admit  some  original  quality  in  the 
germ  that  in  a  vague  and  indefinite  way  acts  as 
a  force  of  predetermination,  its  tendency  is  to 
minimize  this  and  to  regard  it  as  practically  a 
negligible  quantity.  Not  only  the  definable  de- 
velopment of  the  germ  along  the  line  of  its  own 
type  but  the  more  original  steps,  the  branching 
off  into  species,  it  ascribes  to  the  creative 
agency  of  the  environment.    Darwin  expressed 


132        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

this  mere  creative  view  in  his  statement :  given 
a  few  original  germs  and  the  development  of 
all  existing  species  may  be  accounted  for  by 
natural  selection  and  the  other  forces  of  evo- 
lution. 

Now  when  we  consider  the  situation  criti- 
cally, I  think  it  will  become  clear  that  in  both 
philosophies  the  germ  as  a  pre-determining 
form  is  assumed.  Only  the  epigenesist  reads 
out  of  it  all  except  the  indispensable  minimum, 
while  the  preformationist  finds  in  the  germ-cell 
the  hidden  antetype  of  all  the  forms  that  are  to 
develop  from  it.  For  our  purposes  here  we  do 
not  need  to  take  sides  for  it  is  obvious  that  both 
parties  disclaim  the  responsibility  of  absolute 
origin.  Furthermore  when  we  scrutinize  the 
concept  of  the  minimum  indispensable  to  the 
evolution  that  follows,  I  think  we  will  be  led  to 
the  following  conclusion.  The  primary  germ- 
cell  may  not  have  in  it  all  the  definite  poten- 
tiality which  the  preformationist  ascribes  to  it, 
but  when  all  deductions  have  been  made,  in 
order  that  the  minimum  may  be  able  to  perform 
its  biological  duty  it  must  have  in  it  the  pre- 
determining form  of  some  kind  of  individuality. 
The  germ-cell  must  be  able  to  say,  I  am  not  the 
centre  of  a  force  that  is  perfectly  general  and 
indeterminate  for  then  I  would  have  nothing  to 
say  as  to  the  type  or  form  of  existence  into 
which  the  forces  of  nature  are  shaping  me.  In 
that  case  an  inorganic  germ  would  serve  the 
purpose  as  well  as  an  organic.    The  very  fact 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        133 

that  I  am  living  is  a  force  of  predetermination 
in  regard  to  what  I  am  to  become.  Now  how  I 
am  to  conceive  that  force  of  predetermination 
is  a  difficult  question  for  I  am  not  conscious  of 
nursing  in  my  womb  any  definite  predetermin- 
ing forms.  But  of  this  much  I  am  quite  confi- 
dent :  As  a  life-germ  I  have  a  kind  of  individu- 
ality that  belongs  to  my  nature  and  I  feel  quite 
sure  that  anything  that  develops  from  me  will 
inherit  from  me  the  form  of  an  individual.  We 
may,  I  think,  take  the  work  of  the  germ-cell  as 
expressing  the  true  philosophy  of  the  whole 
problem.  It  is  the  insight  into  the  fact  that 
evolution,  when  its  largest  claim  is  allowed,  is 
creative  only  in  a  relative  sense:  That  some- 
thing original  has  to  be  postulated  and  that  the 
responsibility  for  absolute  origin  is  waived. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  debate  the  other 
question ;  namely  that  of  the  bearing  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  evolution  on  the  problem  of  freedom. 
Carrying  with  us  the  insight  of  the  conclusion 
already  reached,  let  us  consider  its  logical  bear- 
ing on  the  question  of  human  agency.  The  first 
point  we  will  emphasize  is  this :  There  is  at  the 
heart  of  the  soul's  life  an  original  something 
which  we  call  its  individuality  which  evolution 
must  assume  and  for  which  it  has  no  explana- 
tion. When  now  we  try  to  conceive  what  this 
individual  form  which  is  inherent  in  the  living 
germ,  may  be,  one  thing  will  seem  to  be  evident ; 
the  principle,  whatever  it  may  be,  will  be  active 
rather  than  passive.    For  if  it  did  not  involve 


134        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

an  initial  activity,  there  would  be  no  occasion 
for  postulating  it  at  all.  The  responsive  move- 
ment in  obedience  to  stimulus  is  all  explicable 
except  the  primary  initiative  that  is  presup- 
posed as  the  very  condition  of  response.  We 
begin  to  see  here  that  all  activity  involves  self- 
activity  and  that  the  evolutionist  is  brought  un- 
willingly to  the  admission  at  this  point  in  his 
philosophy  that  the  germ  of  self-activity  is 
involved  in  life  itself  and  that  when  the  living 
being  reaches  the  stage  of  human  self -conscious- 
ness, it  becomes  conscious  of  this  self-activity 
in  its  own  agency, — a  doctrine  which  in  the  light 
of  the  present  discussion  will  not  need  to  be 
argued  at  length. 

From  this  point  of  view  we  may  answer  the 
question  as  to  the  bearing  of  evolution  on  the 
question  of  freedom  as  follows:  Although  in 
the  operation  of  its  forces  of  heredity  and  en- 
vironment, evolution  seems  to  defy  the  category 
of  predetermination  and  to  close  the  door  to  any 
reasonable  concept  of  freedom;  yet  when  con- 
sidered more  critically  in  the  light  of  its  neces- 
sary presupposition,  it  tells  a  different  story. 
In  the  postulate  of  individuality,  the  principle 
of  active  initiative  is  secured  for  the  living  sub- 
ject and  the  possibility  of  free  self-initiated  ac- 
tion is  left  open.  Furthermore,  if  we  consider 
the  history  of  the  movement  of  the  human  spirit 
itself  as  expressed  in  the  process  of  an  advanc- 
ing civilization,  the  following  fact  will  become 
clear.    The  forces  of  inheritance  and  environ- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       135 

ment  will  be  able  at  any  given  stage  in  the  his- 
tory to  explain  the  rise  of  the  contemporary 
spirit  to  the  level  of  the  past.  This  will  be  ac- 
counted for  by  habit  and  accommodation.  But 
the  characteristic  of  each  generation  is  that  it 
adds  something  to  the  achievement  of  the  past. 
In  order  that  there  may  be  advance,  each  gen- 
eration must  add  its  increment  by  taking  a  new 
step  forward.  This  being  true,  it  will  be  clear 
that  whether  from  the  standpoint  of  the  race  as 
a  whole  or  from  that  of  the  individual,  there 
will  be  this  open  door  to  freedom.  The  way  of 
advance  will  be  open  and  the  forces  of  pre- 
determination will  have  brought  the  spirit  of 
man  up  to  the  point  where  the  demand  for  free 
initiative  will  be  in  old  hands. 

I  think  the  conclusion  here  Is  obvious ;  a  study 
of  the  problem  of  human  agency  as  a  whole 
brings  us  to  this  result,  whether  we  study  the 
psychological  form  of  human  agency  from 
which  we  conclude  that  choice  is  non-mechanical 
and  takes  the  form  of  the  free  and  teleological, 
or,  view  the  problem  in  its  deeper  aspects  aris- 
ing out  of  the  pre-determining  agencies  of  the 
forces  of  evolution,  in  which  case  we  come  upon 
the  fact  that  pre-determination  prepares  the 
way  for  freedom.  In  each  case  the  possibility 
of  free  agency  stands  demonstrated;  not  only 
so,  but  the  necessity  of  it,  in  order  that  the  pri- 
mary postulate  of  creative  evolution  may  be 
justified  and  in  order  that  evolution  itself  may 
not  force  the  spirit  of  man  into  a  procrustean 


136        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

bed  of  a  pre-determined  fate  that  would  para- 
lyze activity  and  render  all  advance  in  life  and 
civilization  impossible. 

We  now  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the  re- 
ligious aspect  of  the  problem.  But  first  a  pre- 
liminary statement:  If  we  recall  the  ground 
distinction  we  have  made  between  the  empirical 
and  real  self,  it  may  be  said  that  the  conclusions 
we  have  reached  above  will  not  be  obvious  from 
any  purely  empirical  point  of  view.  The  em- 
pirical self  taken  abstractly  is  too  much  of  a 
passing  phenomenon  to  bear  the  responsibility 
of  any  dignified  function  like  that  of  freedom. 
The  subject  of  free  activity  must  have  some 
real  standing  in  being.  The  point  of  view  from 
which  the  doctrine  of  freedom  will  seem  reason- 
able is  that  of  the  synthesis  of  the  empirical 
and  the  real  in  view  of  which  the  whole  life  of 
the  soul  may  be  construed  as  a  movement  in 
which  the  soul  strives  to  secure  itself  from  the 
contingency  of  its  empirical  life  by  seeking  its 
grounding  in  the  stable  and  perdurable.  From 
this  point  of  view  it  will  appear  that  though 
the  soul  has  in  its  possession  all  the  conditions 
of  the  possibility  of  free  agency,  it  is  neverthe- 
less true  that  the  achievement  of  real  freedom 
is  a  process  that  includes  the  whole  life  struggle 
of  the  soul.  Its  life  may  be  teleologically  char- 
acterized as  the  effort  to  pass  from  potential  to 
real  freedom.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  may  be 
true,  as  Henri  Bergson  says,  that  man  is  only 
free  in  the  great  crises  of  his  life  when  he  acts 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        137 

most  characteristically.    Such  a  conclusion  will 
harmonize  with  the  principle  of  our  argument 
here  for  we  have  distinguished  between  formal 
and  real  freedom  as  a  teleological  achievement. 
When  we  pass  to  the  religious  aspects  of  free- 
dom, certain  problems  arise  which  we  now  pro- 
ceed to  consider.     Referring  back  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  religious  consciousness  as  devel- 
oped in  former  lectures,  we  may  ask  what  new 
light  does  this  doctrine  shed  on  the  problem  of 
the  soul's  agency.    Bear  in  mind  that  we  have 
distinguished  between  self-existence  and  self- 
activity  and  have  shown  that  the  soul,  while 
self-active,  is  not  self-existent.    It  is  the  intui- 
tion of  self-existence  that  imparts  the  new  di- 
mension to  the  soul's  being.    The  question  we 
are  debating  here  is  what  modification,  if  any, 
this  new  insight  makes  necessary  in  our  con- 
cept of  the  soul's  agency.    Let  us  ask  how  the 
concept  of  self -existence  can  be  brought  to  bear 
on  the  real  in  order  to  become  to  it  the  source 
of  new  insight!    This  question  would  be  unan- 
swerable if  it  were  not  in  part  an  answer  to 
itself.    The  only  way  to  such  an  insight  will  be 
that  of  inclusion ;  that  is,  the  soul  must  identify 
the  transcendent  ground  into  its  own  conscious 
life  that  the  insight  of  the  transcendent  will  be 
its  own.    This  is  what  we  call  the  immanence  of 
the  divine  in  the  human,  a  term  that  is  often 
used  with  little  insight  into  its  meaning.    This 
being  true,  at  the  point  of  immanence  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  agency  of  the  transcendent 


138        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  that  of  the  soul  itself  will  lapse,  and  there 
will  be  a  blend  of  both  into  one.  I  apprehend 
that  this  will  express  the  most  perfect  form  of 
the  religious  consciousness;  the  stage  above 
that  which  the  poet  expresses  thus :  * '  Our  wills 
are  ours  to  make  them  thine,"  when  the  blend 
has  been  completed  and  there  is  no  longer  any 
consciousness  of  two  wills  but  of  one  only  which 
the  religious  consciousness  ascribes  to  God. 
The  immanence  of  God  in  the  human  means 
here  not  the  complete  absorption  of  the  human 
will  into  the  divine,  but  the  blending  into  one 
will  which  so  far  as  concerns  the  individual  hu- 
man is  his  own  will. 

This  will,  I  think,  shed  some  light  on  the  re- 
ligious aspect  of  freedom  and  will  explain  the 
consciousness  we  have  that  in  approaching  to 
God  we  do  not  lose  the  sense  of  our  freedom  but 
on  the  contrary  feel  it  greatly  enhanced.  For 
if  the  religious  consciousness  leads  to  a  blend 
of  the  divine  in  the  human,  then  it  will  be  only 
when  we  are  most  highly  conscious  of  our  rela- 
tion to  God  that  our  consciousness  of  freedom 
in  any  sense  approximates  to  that  of  God  Him- 
self. For  we  have  seen  that  our  own  freedom, 
even  when  at  its  highest,  apart  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  religion,  is  only  relative;  that  it 
falls  short  of  the  absolute  freedom  of  the  self- 
existent.  It  is  only  through  the  medium  of  the 
religious  consciousness,  that  in  its  highest 
reaches  identifies  the  divine  life  with  the  hu- 
man, that  this  relativity  can  be  overcome  in  a 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        139 

measure  and  the  spirit  of  man  rise  to  the  sense 
of  a  freedom  that  is  absolute.  The  conclusion 
we  have  reached  here  will  be  true  only  to  the 
spirit  that  has  risen  to  the  consciousness  of  this 
identification.  It  will  not  be  true  for  any  soul 
that  is  alienated  from  God  or  whose  wickedness 
has  made  a  chasm  between  the  human  soul  and 
the  divine.  Sin  is  something  that  in  its  very 
nature  cuts  the  soul  off  from  this  high  preroga- 
tive. 

Finally  I  wish  to  consider  in  this  connection 
the  doctrine  that  is  sometimes  called  theologi- 
cal fatalism.  It  arises,  as  in  the  case  of  Jona- 
than Edwards,  in  the  identification  of  an  act  of 
choice  with  the  mechanical  type  of  natural  caus- 
ation so  that  the  antecedent  of  the  choice  is 
some  agent  outside  of  the  self  that  is  able  to  de- 
termine it  to  action.  In  the  case  of  the  soul's 
relation  to  God,  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  is 
the  antecedent,  and  in  relation  to  it  the  soul  has 
no  freedom  of  choice.  Now  I  do  not  need  at  this 
point  to  repeat  the  refutation  of  the  mechanical 
doctrine  of  choice  as  it  bears  on  the  relation  of 
the  soul 's  action  to  natural  antecedents.  For  it 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Edwards  was  mis- 
taken in  his  conception  of  the  real  form  of  hu- 
man choice  and  that  in  consequence  his  indefec- 
tible logic  leads  to  what  may  be  called  a  non- 
sequitur.  To  return  then  to  the  doctrine  of  the- 
ological fatalism,  it  proceeds  on  the  assumption 
that  the  situation  is  one  in  which  there  is  an 
issue  between  two  forces,  the  divine  will  and  the 


140        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

human,  and  that  on  the  principle  of  the  stronger 
force  overcoming  the  weaker,  the  human  will  be 
overcome  and  the  divine  will  prevail.  If  the 
situation  were  analogous  to  that  of  a  tug  of  war, 
no  doubt  that  would  be  the  result,  and  we  would 
all  be  partisans  of  the  divine.  But  I  do  not 
need  to  insist  here  that  such  a  representation 
is  crude  almost  to  the  verge  of  absurdity.  Let 
us  admit  that  the  wrecked  man  in  some  way 
makes  himself  the  ward  of  fate,  but  let  us  take 
the  testimony  of  the  normal  religious  conscious- 
ness as  giving  us  the  truth  of  the  matter.  This 
will  teach  us  that,  one  will  cannot  affect  an- 
other in  such  an  external  and  mechanical  fash- 
ion but  only  by  becoming  internal  as  a  motive 
or  desire  of  the  consciousness  to  be  influenced. 
The  only  point  in  the  experience  of  a  human 
soul,  therefore,  on  which  the  plea  of  fatalism 
can  be  brought  to  bear  with  any  force  is  that 
where  the  distinction  between  the  two  agencies 
seems  to  lapse  in  the  blending  of  the  two  into 
one.  Now  the  fact  that  at  that  point  we  do  not 
lose  our  freedom,  but  on  the  contrary  have  our 
sense  of  it  heightened,  is  very  significant.  If 
fatalism  were  true  that  would  be  the  point 
where  the  soul  ought  to  feel  a  sense  of  the  con- 
traction of  its  power  but  the  universal  testi- 
mony is  that  the  opposite  sense  of  great  en- 
largement is  the  dominating  one.  All  the  con- 
siderations that  have  a  vital  bearing  on  the 
issue  seem  to  point  in  the  same  direction.  The 
free  agency  of  man  does  not  suffer  contraction 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        141 

or  suppression  from  the  existence  or  agency  of 
God  except  in  the  case  where  the  soul  regards 
God  as  its  enemy.  But  normally  the  insight  of 
the  religious  consciousness  introduces  a  new 
dimension  not  only  into  the  conscious  life  but 
into  the  conscious  agency  of  man.  The  blending 
of  the  divine  and  the  human  will  initiates  man 
into  a  new  consciousness  of  freedom,  one  that 
is  in  some  sense  commensurate  with  His  divine 
origin.  If  we  define  a  free  act  as  one  that  in 
the  last  analysis  has  the  initiative  of  its  own 
movement  in  itself,  it  will  be  clear  that  the 
proof  of  freedom  is  to  be  found  wherever  there 
is  a  real  agent  for  we  have  but  to  penetrate  be- 
neath appearances  in  order  to  see  that  the  con- 
ditions of  freedom  are  deeply  rooted  in  our  na- 
ture, and  that  the  achievement  of  freedom  as  a 
full  possession  is  the  teleological  goal  of  our 
whole  being:  One  that  can  only  be  fully  real- 
ized in  the  highest  insights  and  experiences  of 
the  religious  consciousness. 

Lecture  VII.    The  Overcoming  of  Evil. 

Here,  as  in  the  case  of  the  problem  of  free- 
dom, much  depends  on  clearing  the  ground  of 
confusing  and  misleading  issues.  We  cannot 
say  that  anything  unsatisfactory  is  evil.  The 
unsatisfactory  condition  may  be  temporary  and 
incidental  to  the  working  out  of  processes  and 
results  that  are  normally  good.  If  we  define  as 
good  that  which  is  tributary  to  life,  we  have 


142        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

simply  determined  the  genus  of  good  while  the 
species  has  been  left  undefined.  It  may  be  true 
that  what  is  not  tributary  to  life  is  evil  but  we 
cannot  assume  it,  for  the  statement  looks  sus- 
piciously like  the  simple  converse  of  a  proposi- 
tion in  A.  We  need  to  be  more  definite  as  to  the 
meaning  of  the  phrase,  tributary  to  life,  and  we 
need  to  inquire  for  the  species  of  the  non-tribu- 
tary that  may  be  defined  as  real  evil.  Now 
when  we  say  tributary  to  life  we  may  fairly  well 
understand  what  tributary  means.  It  means 
promotion  of  the  development  or  completeness 
of  life  and  more  specifically  the  conservation  of 
what  we  may  call  the  true  ends  or  ideal  values 
of  life.  This  restriction  not  only  defines  a  spe- 
cific problem  but  brings  it  into  the  forming  of 
conscious  life  where  alone  the  problem  has  any 
existence.  The  question  of  the  true  end  or  ideal 
of  life  seems  by  its  very  statement  to  be  very 
complex  and  diflficult,  perhaps  beyond  answer. 
But  if  we  consider  it  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
ontological  motive  of  the  living  process  which 
we  have  treated  in  former  lectures  it  would 
seem  to  be  possible  to  define  the  good  in  terms 
of  that  which  is  deemed  to  be  permanently  de- 
sirable. That  men  will  differ  as  to  what  is  per- 
manently desirable  is  a  minor  consideration, 
since  men  may  be  mistaken  in  all  fields  of  in- 
quiry. The  core  of  the  matter  lies,  I  think,  in 
the  phrase  permanently  desirable.  We  admit 
the  possibility  of  mistaking  the  temporarily  de- 
sirable for  the  permanent,  and  even  the  possi- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        143 

bility  of  deliberately  choosing  the  temporary  in 
preference  to  the  permanent.  And  we  admit 
also  the  difficulty  of  determining  what  the  per- 
manently desirable  is.  But  these  perplexities, 
again,  do  not  touch  the  core  of  the  definition. 
Everything  being  granted  that  seems  reason- 
able, it  still  remains  true  that  men  will  agree 
that  the  good  and  the  permanently  desirable 
are  one  and  the  same  thing.  It  will  be  clear 
also  that  a  thing  may  be  desirable  without  be- 
ing permanently  so,  and  it  may  be  possible  on 
this  basis  to  determine  a  subspecies  of  minor 
goods  which  perish  with  the  using.  In  fact  it 
seems  obvious  enough  that  there  are  temporary 
goods  that  while  they  last  are  tributary  to  life 
and  cannot  in  any  sense  be  ranked  as  evil  on 
account  of  their  transitoriness.  But  it  is  also 
evident  that  these  goods  are  a  lower  species 
and  that  the  term  good  in  the  absolute  sense 
must  be  reserved  for  the  goods  that  are  perma- 
nent. Going  on  to  the  second  question ;  that  of 
the  specific  character  of  evil,  several  like  dis- 
tinctions are  pertinent.  The  term  evil  will  be 
applicable  to  that  species  of  the  non-tributary 
to  life  which  may  be  defined  as  positively  hos- 
tile or  unfavorable  to  it.  This  will  put  evil  in 
opposition  to  the  good  and  will  provide  in  the 
very  concept  for  the  avoidance  of  that  confusion 
that  sometimes  results  in  mistaking  evil  for  im- 
perfect or  abortive  form  of  good.  There  would 
be  reason  for  doubting  whether  such,  if  it  exist, 
could   be   put   into    the    category   of    evil    at 


144        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

all.  The  evil  will  be  that  which  is  opposite 
to  good.  But  in  order  that  its  definition  may 
be  commensurate  with  that  of  the  good,  we  must 
exclude  the  category  of  things  that  are  only  in 
temporary  opposition  to  the  good  as  a  relative 
species  in  regard  to  which  the  question  may  be 
put  whether  or  not  they  are  not  to  be  consid- 
ered, in  the  last  analysis,  as  in  some  sense  tem- 
porary phases  of  the  good.  Evil  as  such  and  in 
its  full  concept  will  be  defined  as  the  perma- 
nently undesirable :  as  that  which  in  its  nature 
is  in  permanent  opposition  to  the  good. 

Having  reached  the  definition  of  evil  as  that 
which  is  permanently  undesirable  and  therefore 
hostile  to  the  good,  we  are  in  a  position  now  to 
consider  the  seemingly  hopeless  question :  what 
is  the  real  problem  of  evil  1  I  call  it  seemingly 
hopeless  because  there  are  so  many  and  con- 
flicting ways  in  which  it  has  been  formulated. 
For  example  the  hedonist  will  say  that  evil  is 
pain  and  that  the  question  is  whether  in  a  calcu- 
lus of  pains  and  pleasures,  the  pain  side  of  the 
account  has  a  balance  in  its  favor.  The  result- 
ing theory  of  the  world  will  be  optimistic  or 
pessimistic  according  as  the  balance  swings  in 
favor  of  pleasure  or  pain.  As  the  utilitarian 
who  is  generally  a  hedonist  will  define  evil  as 
that  which  is  hurtful,  meaning  opposite  to  use- 
ful, the  question  with  him  will  be  whether  the 
hurtful  processes  in  the  world  overbalance 
the  useful.  An  example  of  this  would  be  the  de- 
duction of  Malthus  from  the  alleged  truth  that 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION       145 

population  tends  to  increase  more  rapidly  than 
the  means  of  subsistence,  that  the  economic  ten- 
dency of  the  race  is  toward  poverty.  The  Kant- 
ian moralist  on  the  other  hand,  regarding  not 
happiness  but  righteousness,  or  as  some  of  the 
modern  Kantians  term  it,  excellence,  as  the  cri- 
terion of  good,  would  formulate  the  question  in 
terms  of  his  own  ideal.  Is  there  a  tendency 
for  righteousness  to  prevail  over  its  opposite; 
or  do  conditions  exist  which  would  justify  us 
in  hoping  that  righteousness  will  prevail  over 
its  opposite?  The  Kantian  will  be  an  optimist 
or  a  pessimist  according  as  he  believes  that  the 
forces  that  make  for  righteousness  or  their  op- 
posite are  likely  in  the  long  run  to  prevail.  I 
propose  to  avoid  this  field  of  conflict  by  stating 
a  proposition  to  which  it  is  not  impossible  that 
all  the  parties  will  be  able  to  assent;  namely, 
that,  as  a  colleague  and  friend  of  mine  said  re- 
cently in  some  lectures  on  pessimism,  delivered 
before  the  Grove  City  Bible  School,  the  critical 
problem  of  evil  is  not  whether  there  are,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  conditions  in  existence  that  tend 
toward  evil  results,  but  whether  the  fundamen- 
tal constitution  of  the  world  is  evil  or  good.  To 
state  the  proposition  in  a  somewhat  different 
form,  the  great  problem  of  evil  is  not  whether 
evil  exists,  or  how  much  harm  it  does  in  the 
world,  but  rather,  is  evil  so  entrenched  in  the 
conditions  of  existence  that  all  efforts  to  eradi- 
cate it  are  doomed  to  failure.  Stated  thus  it  is 
clear  that  the  answer  to  all  other  questions 


146       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

about  evil  will  depend  on  the  answer  we  return 
to  this  central  problem. 

My  friend  reached  the  optimistic  answer  that 
the  fundamental  order  of  the  world  is  good.  I 
must  go  on,  however,  and  reach  my  own  con- 
clusion. You  know  the  famous  dictum  of  the 
pessimism  of  Schopenhauer,  that  the  root  of  ex- 
istence, the  effort  to  live  is  painful  and  there- 
fore irrational.  The  conclusion  of  Schopen- 
hauer is,  of  course,  that  good  is  impossible  and 
that  evil  is  inherent  in  the  root  of  living  itself. 
This  may  be  true  or  not.  There  is  much  to 
prove  that  living  in  itself  is  sweet.  Further- 
more, if  we  maintain  that  the  act  of  living  is 
painful  and  yet  admit  as  one  must  that  the  in- 
stinct to  life  overcomes  the  aversion  that  the 
pain  of  it  inevitably  causes,  the  question  comes 
as  to  the  inner  motive  of  this  instinct  itself.  It 
would  seem  that  even  granting  the  truth  of  what 
Schopenhauer  says,  the  ontological  motive  of 
life,  that  in  it  which  impels  it  to  press  for  its 
own  completeness,  is  stronger  than  the  pain  of 
actual  existence.  If  this  be  true,  and  how  oth- 
erwise can  we  explain  the  instinct  which  life  has 
for  its  own  preservation,  have  we  not  the  wit- 
ness of  radical  pessimism  in  favor  of  the  truth 
of  our  own  proposition  that  it  is  the  ontological 
motive,  the  end  motive  of  life  that  determines 
for  us  our  final  conceptions  of  good  and  evil! 
It  would  seem  that  the  question  as  to  whether 
the  root  of  existence  is  sweet  or  bitter,  like  that 
of  the  balance  between  goods  and  evils  of  ex- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       147 

istence,  is  one  that  cannot  be  solved.  Perhaps 
we  may  go  further  and  say  that  the  balance  of 
facts  that  have  a  real  bearing  on  the  case  will 
point  to  a  different  conclusion. 

But  there  are  other  points  of  view  from  which 
the  question  as  to  the  character  of  the  funda- 
mental order  may  be  approached.  If  we  say 
that  the  concepts  of  good  and  evil  are  formed 
in  view  of  the  end-motive  of  living ;  that  is,  the 
attainment  of  that  which  will  be  permanently 
satisfactory,  and  if  the  permanently  satisfac- 
tory means  fullness  and  completeness  of  life: 
this  will  itself  have  a  significant  bearing  on  the 
question.  In  this  case  the  whole  nature  of  good 
and  evil  would  have  to  be  determined  in  view 
of  their  relation  to  the  ideal  end  of  life.  It 
would  not  be  a  problem  that  could  be  stated  in 
the  form  of  a  question  as  to  whether  or  not  life 
is  worth  living.  The  fact  that  life  has  ideal 
values  would  seem  to  have  disposed  of  the  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  it  is  worthwhile.  At  all 
events,  to  stop  to  argue  this  point  here  would 
be  a  loss  of  valuable  time.  Let  us  assume  that 
the  fact  that  life  has  ideal  values  does  set  aside 
the  question,  whether  or  not  it  is  worth  living ; 
for  when  we  go  into  a  game  we  calculate  to  play 
it  fairly  and  go  on  to  the  finish.  The  presump- 
tion of  the  fact  that  life  has  ideal  values  is  in 
favor  of  the  conclusion  that  life  is  worth  living 
whether  it  be  bitter  at  its  roots  or  not.  It  is 
also  in  favor  of  the  presumption  that  the  funda- 
mental order  of  the  world  is  consistent  at  least 


148        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

with  the  possibility  of  good.  For,  to  go  back  a 
step  or  two,  the  fact  that  the  ontological  mo- 
tive of  existence  supplies  a  propulsive  force  in 
life  toward  its  full  realization  or  perfection  is 
proof  that  the  most  central  and  significant  thing 
in  life  is  its  idealistic  trend.  It  is  in  the  light  of 
this  that  the  whole  meaning  of  life  is  to  be  de- 
termined. Wc  have  seen  that  the  concepts  of 
good  and  evil  can  be  developed  only  in  terms  of 
the  ideal,  and  the  general  position  we  take  here 
is  that  inasmuch  as  the  very  notions  of  good 
and  evil  are  functions  of  the  ideal,  it  follows 
that  the  true  significance  of  all  the  facts  and 
phenomena  that  bear  on  the  problem  will  ap- 
pear only  when  they  are  brought  into  the  light 
of  the  ideal.  This  is  obvious,  for  good  and  evil 
are  distinguishable  only  in  view  of  the  ideal 
values  of  life,  and  the  solution  of  all  other  prob- 
lems will  depend  on  the  clearness  with  which 
this  distinction  is  realized  and  accepted. 

Taking  this  point  as  settled,  and  confining 
our  attention  to  evil  as  a  factor  in  the  life  of 
conscious  beings,  we  may  look  further  into  the 
bearing  of  the  ideal  character  of  good  and  evil 
on  the  question  as  to  whether  the  fundamental 
order  of  the  world  is  to  be  regarded  as  good.  If 
we  say  that  it  is  good  we  must  do  so  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  evil  exists  and  that  good  is  in  peril 
at  least  of  being  defeated.  Is  there  any  reason 
for  saying  that  the  existence  of  evil  in  the 
world  is  an  insuperable  bar  to  the  proposition 
that  the  fundamental  order  of  the  world  is 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        149 

good?  Let  us  examine  the  proposition.  If  good 
and  evil  upon  inspection  prove  to  be  conceptions 
that  are  coordinate  and  of  equal  positive  value, 
then  we  shall  have  to  conclude  that  the  funda- 
mental order  cannot  be  regarded  as  unquali- 
fiedly good.  There  are,  however,  several  con- 
siderations that  have  a  bearing  on  this  question. 
When  we  consider  the  two  concepts  of  good  and 
evil,  reasons  will  appear  for  denying  that  they 
can  be  taken  as  resting  on  the  same  plane.  For 
if  we  ask  this  question,  are  the  two  concepts 
mutually  implied  in  one  another,  the  answer 
will  be  that  while  the  concept  of  evil  implies 
that  of  good,  it  is  not  true  on  the  contrary  that 
the  concept  of  good  implies  that  of  evil.  The 
good  is  therefore  the  prior  concept  and  has  an 
ontological  value  that  the  evil  does  not  possess. 
Again  when  we  consider  the  concept  of  evil,  we 
find  that  it  is  not  positive  like  that  of  the  good, 
having  ontological  structures  of  its  own,  but 
that  it  rather  uses  the  form  of  the  good  in  order 
to  ruin  the  structure  of  the  good.  A  lie  for  ex- 
ample has  no  independent  structure  of  its  own 
but  employs  the  form  of  truth  in  order  to  de- 
feat the  truth.  From  this  which  will  be  found 
true  generally,  we  may  draw  the  conclusion  that 
evil  is  negative  in  its  ontological  structure 
while  good  is  positive.  In  the  world  evil  is  the 
spirit  of  denial  and  negation :  it  is  the  destroyer 
not  the  builder;  its  negative  ideal  is  chaos  and 
disorder;  its  symbol  is  darkness  rather  than 


150        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

light,  and  abysmal  perdition  rather  than  the 
stable  and  permanent. 

If  then  evil  is  negative,  and  if  it  has  no  per- 
manent ontological  ideals,  it  would  appear  that 
it  is  not  only  not  entitled  to  the  position  of  a  co- 
ordinate with  the  good;  but  also  that  it  is  not 
provided  for  in  the  original  constitution  of 
things,  and,  like  a  late  intruder,  finds  it  nec- 
essary to  make  a  place  for  itself  by  creating  a 
breach  in  the  order  already  established.  This 
I  should  say  is  more  than  a  mere  appearance. 
The  negative  character  and  function  of  evil 
confirms  its  truth,  and  also  explains  the  fact 
that  the  notion  of  evil  always  implies  a  good 
without  which  the  evil  could  not  exist.  We  will 
be  on  firm  ground,  I  think,  if  from  these  sig- 
nificant facts  we  conclude  that  evil  is  not  a  fact 
of  the  fundamental  order  of  existence  at  all,  but 
presupposes  the  existence  of  that  order,  and 
that  its  business  is  to  prey  upon  that  order  and 
defeat  and  destroy  it.  The  fundamental  order 
is  good  and  the  idea  of  good  is  therefore  that 
of  the  permanent  satisfaction  that  arises  from 
the  realization  of  the  permanent  order  of  the 
world.  Or,  to  put  it  in  other  words,  the  good 
may  be  defined  as  the  permanent  satisfaction 
which  arises  from  the  realization  of  the  ideal 
order  of  life.  The  ideal  of  life  will  be  its  com- 
pleteness or  perfection,  and  this  will  be  part  of 
the  ideal  order  of  the  world  which  constitutes 
its  fundamental  nature. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  concept  of  evil  in 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       151 

somewliat  further  detail.  We  may  define  as 
evil  the  failure  of  the  good,  but  it  is  not  clear 
that  mere  failure  can  be  called  evil ;  nor  can  we 
regard  mere  privation  of  good  as  evil.  The 
concept  in  both  cases  is  too  empty.  Also  the  no- 
tion of  imperfection  is  inadequate  since  it  only 
implies  the  absence  of  the  sense  of  attainment; 
not  even  its  failure.  We  do  not  deny  that  fail- 
ure, privation,  and  imperfection,  may  in  some 
of  their  consequences  be  evil,  but  in  all  such 
cases  some  condition  more  definitely  inconsis- 
tent with  the  good  will  enter.  We  begin  to 
reach  definite  ground  of  evil  when  we  define  it 
as  aberration  or  a  tendency  to  depart  from  the 
good.  Aberration  will  be  evil  in  the  sense  that 
it  is  a  departure  from  the  line  of  the  good. 
While  aberration  considered  as  eccentricity 
may  be  considered  evil  and  in  many  instances 
is  in  fact,  we  do  not  in  mere  aberration  from  the 
good  standard  get  an  adequate  concept  of  evil. 
For  example  the  line  of  statement  may  be  an 
eccentric  departure  from  the  perpendicular  of 
truth  without  necessarily  becoming  a  lie.  We 
find  it  necessary  to  introduce  the  notions  of  op- 
position and  contradiction  in  order  to  fill  out 
the  full  measure  of  the  concept  of  evil.  For  a 
lie,  for  example,  is  more  than  a  departure  from 
the  truth  or  a  failure  to  tell  the  truth.  It  is  op- 
posed to  and  contradictory  to  the  truth.  We 
must  not  mistake,  however,  wherein  this  con- 
tradiction lies.  It  does  not  consist  in  a  contra- 
dictory ontological  structure.    If  it  did,  the  lie 


152       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

would  be  impossible :  nor  does  it  consist  essen- 
tially in  stating  the  opposite  of  the  facts.  This 
happens  frequently  without  any  lie  being  told. 
It  will  consist,  and  this  is  significant,  in  deceiv- 
ing and  misleading  the  person  to  whom  the 
statement  is  made.  It  is  the  use  of  a  form  of 
truth  to  convey  a  meaning  the  opposite  of  that 
which  a  true  statement  would  convey.  In  short 
it  is  an  appeal  to  the  ideal.  There  is  a  standard 
of  truth  which  commands  common  acceptance. 
This  is  an  ideal  to  which  all  are  committed  in 
their  statements.  The  liar  is  false  to  the  ideal. 
His  act  is  one  that  assails  it  and  attempts  to 
destroy  it.  We  may  generalize  this  instance 
and  say  that  in  all  cases  where  the  essential  na- 
ture of  evil  can  be  determined  it  will  be  found 
that  it  is  opposite  and  contradictory  to  the  ideal 
of  the  good. 

If  now  we  attempt  to  distinguish  between  dif- 
ferent forms  of  evil,  we  will  be  able  to  make  sev- 
eral distinctions  of  greater  or  less  value.  Leib- 
nitz is  perhaps  our  best  guide  here.  He  classi- 
fies the  species  of  evil  under  three  different 
heads;  natural,  metaphysical,  and  moral.  The 
natural,  to  hold  the  discussion  within  limits  al- 
ready defined,  would  include  what  are  called  the 
natural  evils  of  life,  pain,  disease,  poverty  and 
death.  Metaphysical  evil  would  consist  in  im- 
perfections while  moral  evil  can  be  brought  un- 
der the  category  of  sin.  Turning  then  to  the 
form  of  evil  called  natural,  it  may  be  said  that 
while  all  the  forms  we  have  stated  except  the 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        153 

phenomenon  of  death  are  evils  of  a  grave  order, 
two  facts  are  true  regarding  them.  In  the  first 
place  they  are  either  avoidable  or  curable. 
Pain  in  the  abstract  is  an  unqualified  evil  but 
concretely  it  may  in  general  be  regarded  as  a 
danger  signal  set  up  by  nature  to  warn  con- 
scious beings  from  breaking  some  of  her  laws. 
This  is  generally  true,  and  even  where  pain 
strikes  innocent  victims,  we  can  trace  the  agen- 
cies that  enable  us  to  see  that  it  is  avoidable 
and  thus  take  the  hopeful  and  remedial  view. 
In  the  case  of  disease  and  poverty  the  case  is 
clearer.  There  are  economic  evils  which  are 
traceable  to  bad  but  remediable  causes,  and 
while  it  is  true  that  in  the  case  of  both  disease 
and  poverty  the  world  is  full  of  innocent  vic- 
tims, the  fact  that  these  are  all  remediable  and 
that  by  a  more  perfect  action  of  human  agencies 
they  might  have  been  prevented,  is  sufficient  to 
justify  the  conclusion  that  bad  as  they  are  the 
case  is  not  hopeless.  They  contain  in  them  the 
implication  of  no  infraction  of  the  fundamental 
order  of  the  world.  That  this  is  good  and  that 
therefore  sickness  and  poverty  ought  not  to  ex- 
ist is  rather  the  logic  of  all  hopeful  measures 
for  their  relief.  As  to  death  which  has  been 
called  the  arch-enemy  of  life,  we  do  not  know 
enough  about  it  to  be  able  to  say  whether  this 
is  true  or  not.  But  there  are  some  facts  about 
death  which  will  perhaps  shed  some  rays  of 
light  into  the  dark  prospect.  It  is  to  be  borne 
in  mind  that  death,  apart  from  the  apprehension 


154        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

of  it,  in  its  relation  to  life  is  only  an  event  with- 
out significance,  and  so  far  as  we  know  the  act 
is  painless.  It  is  only  a  consciousness  that 
can  look  before  and  behind,  that  can  have  some 
sense  of  the  sweetness  of  life  and  of  its  ideal 
outlook,  that  can  regard  death  as  an  evil  or  feel 
any  regrets  at  the  prospect  or  certainty  of  its 
approach.  The  significance  of  this  is  great.  If 
life  be  sweet,  we  may  feel  in  the  prospect  of 
death,  as  the  shade  of  the  ancient  Greek  is  rep- 
resented as  feeling,  that  a  single  day  of  life 
among  men  is  better  than  an  aeon  in  Hades.  In 
this  case  it  is  not  any  mystical  thing  caUed 
death  but  simply  the  ending  of  a  desirable  state 
of  existence  that  is  considered  the  evil.  Again, 
I  think  we  may  say  that  the  largest  ingredient 
in  the  evil  of  death  to  mortals  arises  from  the 
fact  that  it  seems  to  be  a  defeat  of  the  plans 
and  purposes  and  ideals  of  life.  The  sense  of 
the  vanity  and  of  the  futility  of  life  springs 
largely  from  the  feeling  of  life's  brevity.  In 
the  midst  of  his  plans  and  enjoyments,  the  de- 
stroyer strikes,  and  his  house  of  cards  is  shat- 
tered and  the  cup  falls  from  his  lips.  Surely 
life  is  a  vain  show.  Now  the  point  of  all  this 
as  it  bears  on  our  problem  is  that  the  evil  of 
death  is  measured  largely  in  terms  of  some  ideal 
of  life  which  we  mortals  entertain.  It  is  not  so 
much  that  it  dashes  the  cup  from  our  lips,  but 
it  seems  to  block  the  way  to  all  ideals  of  perma- 
nent satisfaction.  It  is  as  a  destroyer  of  the 
ideal  that  death  seems  to  be  the  great  evil  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        155 

existence.  We  can  understand  this  and  it  in- 
terprets for  us  the  attitude  taken  toward  death 
in  much  of  the  literature  of  the  world  where 
life  is  idealized  and  death  is  represented  as  the 
great  enemy  that  breaks  in  and  thwarts  the  ef- 
forts of  life  toward  permanent  satisfaction. 
How  else  could  the  gloom  be  so  deep ;  the  regret 
so  poignant?  When  a  child  dies  we  do  not 
interpret  the  evil  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
child-consciousness  to  which  it  is  doubtless  al- 
most nil,  but  rather  from  our  own  larger  per- 
spective and  in  terms  of  the  ideal  satisfactions 
it  has  been  cut  off  from  realizing.  Of  course  we 
may  be  pessimists  and  then  we  will  not  regard 
the  child's  death  as  an  evil  at  all,  but  as  an 
escape  from  evil.  If  then  death  is  considered 
an  evil  only,  or  for  the  most  part,  as  it  seems  to 
contradict  our  ideal  estimate  of  the  value  of 
life,  we  come  back  to  our  old  proposition  that 
the  evil  of  life  is  to  be  estimated  in  terms,  not 
of  brute  fact  as  Professor  Royce  would  say, 
but  in  terms  of  ideal  values.  This  is  true  of  all 
the  forms  we  have  considered,  and  if  we  elimi- 
nate from  the  problem  the  evils  that  are  reme- 
diable, we  will  have  as  our  irreducible  residu- 
um those  evils  that  are  bound  up  with  mortal 
existence,  pain,  defeat,  and  death.  In  regard 
to  these  we  have  already  reached  the  conclusion 
that  the  respect  in  which  they  are  unmistakably 
evil  arises  out  of  their  relation  to  the  ideal 
values  of  life.  Pain,  for  example,  may  be  re- 
garded as  disciplinary  up  to  the  point  where  it 


156        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

clearly  stands  in  the  way  of  realizing  the  good ; 
it  then  becomes  destructive. 

There  remains  then  of  our  species  of  evil,  sin 
or  its  moral  aspect.  There  is  a  famous  old 
formula  that  defines  sin  as  any  want  of  con- 
formity to,  or  transgression  of,  the  law  of  God. 
This  formula  is  profoundly  significant,  for  it 
seems  to  cover  the  grounds  of  both  the  meta- 
physical and  the  moral  as  per  the  classification 
of  Leibnitz.  Such  is  in  fact  the  case  if  we  do 
not  interpret  the  formula  too  narrowly,  for  if 
want  of  conformity  be  construed  objectively  and 
apart  from  our  consciousness  of  it,  it  will 
simply  be  measured  by  the  distance  between 
action  and  its  ideal  standard.  Sin  itself  is  de- 
fined objectively  in  terms  of  this  distance  or  on 
its  more  positive  side  in  terms  of  opposition  to 
the  ideal  standard.  If  we  translate  it  into  psy- 
chological terms  and  substitute  philosophical 
for  theological  terms,  the  formula  may  be  read 
as  follows :  Sin  is  the  soul's  sense  of  its  failure 
to  realize  the  ideal  standard  of  perfection  and 
of  its  active  transgression  of  the  ideal  stan- 
dard. The  two  evils,  a  sense  of  failure  to  rea- 
lize and  of  actual  infraction  of  the  standard, 
seem  to  fill  out  the  measure  of  sin  as  a  state  of 
the  conscious  life  of  the  subject. 

Let  us  consider  then  these  two  aspects  in  the 
conception  of  sin.  There  could  be  no  sin,  it  is 
clear,  except  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  ideal 
values  of  life.  This  is  evident.  Now,  the  first 
part  of  the  definition;  the  sense  of  the  failure 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        157 

to  measure  up  to  the  standard  of  ideal  value, 
while  it  does  not  involve  any  actual  transgres- 
sion, or  in  fact  any  disposition  to  transgress,  is 
yet  the  source  of  the  profoundest  consciousness 
of  sin.  It  was  no  doubt  from  this  inevitable 
failure  to  realize  the  ideal  that  the  Stoics  as 
well  as  the  early  Christian  thinkers  developed 
their  doctrine  of  total  depravity.  Christian 
thought  connected  the  doctrine  with  that  of  the 
fall  of  man  and  the  hereditary  transmission  of 
its  effects  along  spiritual  lines;  whereas,  in 
stoicism  there  is  no  such  saving  clause,  but  the 
depravity  is  inherent  in  man's  constitution.  It 
may  be  overcome  by  those  who  are  able  to  live 
up  to  the  requirements  of  the  life  of  perfect 
reason.  But  for  all  men,  except  a  few,  the  fail- 
ure, like  the  Karma  of  the  Hindu  philosophy 
will  be  an  inevitable  perdition.  It  must  be  con- 
fessed that  the  Christian  doctrine  of  total  de- 
pravity has  shown  a  constant  tendency  to  free 
itself  from  the  limits  of  the  doctrine  of  the  fall 
and  to  find  the  real  root  of  depravity  intrinsic 
in  the  constitution  of  man.  Without  following 
this  line  farther,  it  will  be  evident,  I  think,  that 
the  deepest  sense  of  sin  will  spring  from  the 
consciousness  of  the  failure  of  our  lives  to 
measure  up  to  the  standard  of  ideal  values.  On 
the  other  hand  our  actual  sense  of  sin  in  the 
plural  will  be  largely,  if  not  exclusively,  that  of 
acts  or  attitudes  that  are  in  contravention  of 
the  law  of  the  ideal. 
Now  without  going  further  into  detail  we  are 


158        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

in  a  position  from  which  the  following  conclu- 
sion may  be  drawn.  The  implication  of  all 
forms  of  sin  is  that  life  has  ideal  values  which 
set  the  standards  of  living  to  which  the  soul  by 
virtue  of  its  constitution  is  committed.  These 
standards  are  both  the  lineaments  of  the  ideal 
and  the  laws  of  its  activity.  Sin,  therefore,  im- 
plies a  service  of  the  ideal.  It  is  its  sense  that 
this  service  expresses  its  true  life  that  gives  it 
the  deep  sense  of  sin  in  view  of  its  failure  to 
conform  or  of  its  actual  infractions  or  its  temp- 
tations to  infract. 

The  question  of  the  origin  of  evil  has,  per- 
haps, been  surrounded  with  difficulties  that  are 
more  apparent  than  real.  It  is  usual  to  hamper 
the  problem  with  certain  assumptions  about  the 
author  of  existence  which  turn  out  to  be  incon- 
sistent with  any  rational  treatment  of  the  prob- 
lem. It  is  my  purpose  here  to  point  out  the 
only  assumption  that  seems  to  be  necessary  as 
a  condition  of  a  rational  answer.  This  is  the 
conclusion  toward  which  the  whole  of  the  pre- 
ceding discussion  has  been  pointing.  There  is, 
in  the  first  place,  nothing  in  the  fact  of  the  ex- 
istence of  evil  in  the  world  to  militate  against 
the  doctrine  that  the  fundamental  constitution 
of  things  is  good.  Secondly,  our  analysis  of  the 
concepts  of  good  and  evil,  as  well  as  our  study 
of  the  different  forms  of  evil,  may  strongly 
support  the  doctrine  that  evil  in  all  its  forms  is 
to  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  ideal  values 
of  life.    If,  in  other  words,  the  constitution  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       159 

things  did  not  reveal  a  standard  of  ideal  values, 
evil  would  practically  cease  to  be  evil  by  losing 
a  large  part  of  its  significance.  We  may  then 
conclude  with  a  high  degree  of  rational  certi- 
tude that  the  fundamental  constitution  of  the 
world  is  good.  This  I  am  prepared  to  claim  as 
the  only  assumption  that  it  is  necessary  to  make 
in  order  to  make  a  rational  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem possible.  In  the  first  place  then  if  the  fun- 
damental constitution  of  things  is  good,  it  will 
follow  that  evil  will  arise  out  of  conditions  that 
are  themselves  good.  Augustine  recognizes  this 
when  he  says  in  his  Confessions,  that  the  ante- 
cedent of  an  evil  will  is  a  good  will.  In  other 
words,  if  we  go  deep  enough  into  the  problem  we 
will  find  a  point  where  evil  vanishes  and  every- 
thing becomes  good.  This  seems  to  be  at  first 
sight  only  a  deeper  mystery.  How  can  evil 
come  out  of  good?  In  answering  this  question 
I  wish  to  state  in  the  first  place  a  very  deep 
fact  which  I  will  be  unable  to  elaborate.  It  is 
this,  that  our  whole  doctrine  of  evil,  as  we  have 
unfolded  it,  involves  a  certain  conclusion  about 
the  nature  of  men.  We  have  given  our  reasons 
for  assuming  that  a  rational  solution  of  the 
problem  of  evil  depends  on  the  postulate  of  the 
goodness  of  the  fundamental  order  of  the  world. 
A  branch  of  that  postulate  will  have  a  vital 
bearing  on  the  question  of  the  origin  of  evil  in 
man's  nature.  In  short  in  order  to  make  the 
situation  at  all  rational,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
assume  that,  fundamentally,  the  nature  of  man 


160       PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION 

is  good  and  incorruptible.  We  have  seen  that 
sin  can  only  be  known  as  sin  in  the  light  of  a 
standard  of  ideal  values.  The  consciousness  of 
sin  arises  from  our  recognition  of  this  standard 
as  expressing  our  true  existence.  Sin  is  the  con- 
sciousness of  failure  to  realize  our  ideal,  which 
is  our  real  self,  or  our  consciousness  of  volun- 
tary infraction  of  its  law.  What  the  theologian 
calls  the  Will  of  God  will  be  from  another  point 
of  view  the  law  of  the  real  self.  This  we  have 
justified  in  our  doctrine  that  there  is  a  point  of 
immanence  where  the  Divine  Will  and  the  hu- 
man will  become  one.  In  one  aspect  of  it,  it 
becomes  the  will  of  a  self  of  ideal  values  which 
is  presupposed  in  the  whole  theory  of  evil. 
There  is  a  point  in  the  constitution  of  man 
where  it  becomes  identical  with  the  fundamental 
constitution  of  the  world  and  when  it  speaks,  it 
will  speak  from  the  standpoint  of  that  constitu- 
tion. It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  Kant's 
doctrine  of  the  autonomy  of  the  will  derives  its 
true  significance.  For  it  is  the  will  of  the  un- 
perverted  noumenal  self  that  utters  the  cate- 
gorical imperative  of  the  moral  law,  and  this 
will,  if  Kant  had  seen  the  fact,  is  at  the  same 
time  both  the  Divine  will  and  the  will  of  the 
unperverted  self.  When  Augustine  says  that 
the  antecedent  of  the  evil  will  is  the  good  will, 
he  has  a  deeper  truth  in  mind  than  that  in  the 
empirical  line  of  acts  of  choice  we  come  to  a 
point  where  the  next  antecedent  is  not  evil.  He 
meant   this   but  much   more.     Metaphysically 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       161 

speaking,  there  is  always  a  will  that  is  good,  and 
that  is  the  will  of  the  real  self  that  stands  above 
the  empirical  and  through  conscience  utters  its 
law  to  the  empirical.  If  we  enter  into  the 
deeper  Angnstinian  insight,  the  situation  that 
reveals  itself  will  be  that  of  a  nature  that  has 
in  it  a  distinction  between  an  empirical  and  a 
real  self.  The  empirical  self  will  be  the  self 
that  makes  our  individual  and  momentary 
choices.  It  acts  and  passes  and  some  other 
empirical  subject  takes  its  place.  But  back  of  it 
or  above  it  or  within  it,  as  we  have  seen,  there  is 
an  abiding  self  which  holds  the  empirical  to  per- 
manent conditions  and  utters  the  permanent 
law  of  existence.  If  we  ask  where  evil  belongs 
in  this  constitution,  the  answer  will  be  that  it 
is  man's  empirical  and  perishable  self  that  is 
evil.  The  significance  of  James '  doctrine  of  the 
perishable  self  will  be  recognized  here.  James 
finds  some  principle  of  continuity  like  the  Hin- 
du Karma  that  binds  the  empirical  selves  into 
a  continuous  chain  along  which  the  empirical 
doom  of  the  antecedent  may  be  transmitted.  If 
we  recall  a  doctrine  that  we  developed  in  a 
former  lecture,  we  will  be  able,  I  think,  to  find 
the  true  interpretation  for  this  conclusion  of 
James,  and  at  the  same  time  secure  a  signifi- 
cant clue  to  the  way  in  which  evil  may  arise  in 
a  system  that  is  good.  The  doctrine  I  refer  to 
is  that  it  is  in  the  synthesis  of  the  empirical  and 
the  real  selves ;  of  the  momentary  and  the  abid- 
ing ;  that  we  find  the  key  to  the  concrete  life  of 


162       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  soul.  From  that  point  of  view  we  saw  that 
the  law  of  its  activity  as  a  whole  could  be  char- 
acterized as  a  perpetual  effort  to  pass  from  the 
momentary  and  perishable  to  that  which  is 
abiding  and  stable.  If  we  hold  fast  to  this  con- 
ception and  avail  ourselves  of  the  insight  of 
natural  history  which  teaches  the  lesson  of  a 
gradual  genetic  progress  of  life  upward  through 
the  animal  stages  to  the  human,  and  in  the 
human,  from  the  senstitive  to  the  rational,  we 
will  reach  something  like  the  following.  The 
life  of  the  soul  in  its  natural  history  passes 
through  a  number  of  progressive  stages  from 
the  lower  to  the  higher,  each  of  which  manifest 
a  mode  of  activity  that  is  appropriate  to  its 
stage  of  existence  and  therefore  good.  Thus 
we  say  that  the  animal  stage  will  be  dominated 
by  instinct,  the  lower  human  by  sense,  and  the 
higher  by  reason.  Now  what  we  find  in  each 
one  of  these  stages,  going  from  the  lower  to  the 
higher,  is  the  survival  of  the  law  of  the  pre- 
ceding stage  in  the  higher,  as  a  lower  nature 
which  the  higher  stage,  when  its  activity  is  nor- 
mal, subordinates  to  the  higher  law  of  its  own 
nature.  Thus,  in  a  being  that  has  reached  the 
stage  of  reason,  the  laws  of  instinct  and  of  the 
sensitive  nature  will  survive.  If  these  are  held 
in  subordination  to  reason,  all  will  go  well.  But 
it  is  evident  that  these  lower  forces  will  seek 
to  dominate  the  higher  nature  and  that  whether 
they  succeed  or  not,  they  will  constitute  a  temp- 
tation to  the  higher  nature  to  fall  under  the  law 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION        163 

of  the  lower.  It  is  evident  also  that  should  a  ra- 
tional being  that  has  the  higher  ideals  of  life, 
and  recognizes  these  as  its  law,  fall  under  the 
law  of  the  lower  and  act  in  the  level  of  instinct 
or  sense,  it  would  immediately  develop  the  sense 
of  sin.  It  would  be  conscious  not  only  of  having 
fallen  short,  for  this  consciousness  might  not 
give  rise  to  the  sense  of  sin ;  but  also  of  having 
contravened  the  higher  law;  of  having  proved 
traitor  to  its  higher  nature.  I  think  we  have  a 
perfectly  clear  account  here  of  the  way  in  which 
a  being  that  is  good  may  fall  into  sin.  The  sin 
would  consist  in  the  fact  that  a  higher  nature, 
or,  if  you  prefer,  will,  whose  prerogative  it  is 
to  dominate  the  lower  will  of  instinct  or  sense, 
has  fallen  under  the  dominance  of  the  will  of  in- 
stinct or  sense,  and  chooses  the  good  of  the 
lower  for  its  own  proper  and  higher  good. 
Augustine  says  virtually  the  same  things  in  his 
contention  that  the  soul  falls  into  evil  and  com- 
mits sin  by  choosing  some  lower  or  creature 
good  as  its  supreme  good  and  putting  it  in  place 
of  the  supreme  good  which  is  God.  A  strong 
confirmation  of  the  truth  of  this  is  found  in  the 
consciousness  of  it  that  is  displayed  in  the  best 
spiritual  literature.  I  need  not  quote  Augustine 
further.  The  classical  example  will  be  found  in 
that  famous  passage  in  Romans  in  which  Paul 
describes  a  warfare  between  the  flesh  and  the 
spirit  in  which  the  spirit  is  constantly  being 
brought  under  bondage  to  the  law  of  the  flesh, 
and  as  a  consequence  deadening  the  conscious- 


164       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

ness  of  sin.  The  consciousness  of  the  same 
struggle  is  betrayed  in  the  biographies  of  the 
saints  and  in  the  common  consciousness  that 
arises  when  a  propensity  that  is  innocent  in  it- 
self has  been  gratified  in  circumstances  where  a 
higher  law  is  contravened. 

To  develop  this  position  at  length  here  would 
be  impossible.  But  an  insight  has  been  reached, 
I  think,  that  will  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
existence  of  evil  in  the  world  is  consistent  with 
the  doctrine  that  the  fundamental  order  of  the 
world  is  good.  We  will  also  be  ready  to  admit 
that  an  intelligible  theory  of  the  possible  origin 
of  evil  and  sin  in  a  good  system  is  possible ;  that 
in  the  doctrine  that  sin  originates  in  a  fall  of  a 
good  will,  temporarily  at  least,  under  the  law 
of  that  which  is  lower,  we  are  able  to  interpret 
the  classical  passages  on  the  subject  in  the 
spiritual  literature  of  the  world.  The  gravity 
of  moral  evil  or  sin  arises  from  the  fact  that 
while  it  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  goodness  of 
the  fundamental  order  of  the  world,  it  does,  in 
fact,  involve  a  breach  in  that  order  at  a  particu- 
lar point:  the  higher  will  has  surrendered  it- 
self to  the  lower  will  and  has  thereby  become 
evil.  This  shows  the  gravity  of  sin  as  a  breach 
in  the  order  of  the  world  at  a  point  where  the 
life  of  an  individual  soul  touches  and  is  one  with 
it.  From  this  point  of  view  the  final  problem  of 
the  cure  of  evil  arises.  This  problem  has  spe- 
cial reference  to  sin  or  evil  in  its  moral  and  its 
most  serious  aspect.    If  it  be  true  that  sin  is  a 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       165 

breach  in  the  fundamental  order  at  the  vital 
point  where  the  soul's  existence  becomes  one 
with  it,  the  seriousness  of  the  situation  and  the 
inadequacy  of  any  proposed  remedies  that  do 
not  go  deep  into  the  nature  of  man  becomes  al- 
most self-evident. 

The  problem  of  the  cure  of  evil  will  divide 
naturally  into  two  parts,  that  which  concerns 
the  group  of  evils  which  are  included  in  the  cate- 
gory of  remediable  by  ordinary  human  agencies 
and  those  like  death  and  sin  that  are  not  cur- 
able in  that  way.  Regarding  the  first  group  lit- 
tle need  be  said  except  that  the  difficulties  are 
to  be  met  by  human  intelligence  and  foresight. 
They  involve  the  regeneration  of  human  society, 
the  eradications  of  the  causes  of  the  disturb- 
ances, and  the  reorganization  of  the  social 
forces  along  the  lines  of  human  welfare.  To 
correctly  diagnose  the  disease  and  to  devise 
practicable  and  effective  remedies  are  tasks  that 
will  call  for  more,  no  doubt,  than  the  present 
resources  of  human  knowledge  and  devotion  to 
the  good.  But  the  point  of  interest  to  us  here 
is  the  fact  that  men  may  approach  the  task  with 
the  reasonable  belief  that  it  is  not  only  practic- 
able but  that  it  is  not  beyond  their  human  re- 
sources. We  may  leave  the  rest  to  the  practical 
reformer.  In  regard  to  the  second  group,  the 
case  is  different.  No  one  in  his  sober  senses 
has  proposed  to  abolish  death.  It  stands  there 
a  door  of  exit  from  the  only  life  of  which  we 
have  any  conscious  knowledge.    We  have  seen, 


166        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

however,  that  the  evil  of  death  is  largely  esti- 
mated from  the  point  of  view  of  the  ideal  values 
of  life :  that  if  the  scope  of  the  life  vision  could 
be  circumscribed  by  the  limits  of  time  and  sense, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  animals,  death  could  scarce- 
ly be  called  an  evil.  It  is  in  view  of  the  life  that 
is  **on  ahead"  with  its  ideal  satisfactions  that 
death  becomes  the  great  destroyer.  If  this  be 
true,  and  there  is  not  room  for  reasonable  doubt 
on  the  subject,  it  would  appear  that  redress  of 
the  evil  of  death  would  have  to  be  sought  in 
some  conception  of  the  ideal  values  of  life.  If 
death  is  inevitable  the  cure  of  death  as  an  evil 
will  be  to  seek  in  a  conception  of  life  from  the 
point  of  view  of  its  ideal  values  that  will  make 
it  appear,  not  what  to  the  ordinary  view  it  ap- 
pears to  be,  the  end  and  defeat  of  life,  but 
rather  an  episode  in  a  life  history  that  opens 
the  door  into  new  fields  of  realitv.  Aside  from 
this  prospect  nothing  remains  except  the  con- 
sideration that  a  life  may  be  so  filled  with  satis- 
factions that  the  desire  for  the  "on  ahead"  will 
be  swallowed  up  in  the  sense  of  the  worth  of 
what  has  been  already  achieved.  That  this  is 
a  consideration  of  some  value  may  be  admitted 
but  that  the  most  generous  souls,  those  whose 
loyalty  to  the  good  is  greatest,  could  not  with- 
out lowering  their  ideals  take  advantage  of  its 
consolation,  is  also  evident.  For  the  most  gen- 
erous souls  value  life  for  the  scope  it  gives  to 
their  beneficent  activities,  and  there  is  a  subtle 
self-contradiction  involved  in  the  supposition 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       167 

that  they  could  regard  the  cutting  off  of  these 
opportunities  as  anything  but  an  evil.  Not  to 
dwell  on  what  we  must  consider  the  major  issue 
here,  the  question  whether  there  are  grounds  to 
rationally  justify  a  conception  of  life  that  will 
remove  death  from  the  category  of  evils,  a 
theme  that  will  come  up  for  further  considera- 
tion in  the  lecture  on  the  Destiny  of  the  Soul, 
let  us  now  take  up  our  final  problem — that  of 
the  remedy  for  sin  or  moral  evil.  Going  back 
to  the  conclusion  reached  in  a  former  passage 
of  this  lecture ;  that  sin  involves  a  breach  in  the 
fundamental  order  of  the  world  at  the  point 
where  that  order  vitalizes  in  the  consciousness 
of  the  sinner;  there  are  several  questions  on 
which  the  insight  of  this  will  shed  some  light. 
In  the  first  place  it  helps  us  to  realize  the  na- 
ture and  gravity  of  sin  as  an  evil,  and  how 
radically  it  affects  the  nature  of  man.  If  sin  is 
a  breach  of  the  fundamental  order  at  the  point 
where  the  soul  becomes  conscious  of  it  as  its 
own  highest  order,  it  will  mark  a  radical  per- 
version of  that  order,  and  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  deepest  consciousness  a  sense  of 
treason  to  that  order.  The  soul  that  sins  will 
feel  that  it  has  thereby  become  a  traitor  to  the 
highest,  and  further  that  there  is  no  atonement 
that  it  can  itself  make  for  its  offense.  From 
any  lower  point  of  view  than  the  highest,  com- 
pensation would  be  possible,  since  it  would  be 
possible  to  atone  in  terms  of  a  higher  order  than 
that  in  which  the  offence  was  committed.    Thus 


168       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

if  I  take  advantage  of  a  position  of  trust  and 
steal  money  that  belongs  to  another,  I  cannot 
atone  by  simply  restoring  the  breach  I  have 
made  in  the  order  of  property  rights.  If  that 
were  true,  I  could  make  complete  atonement  by 
replacing  the  money  I  had  stolen.  I  might, 
however,  do  this  and  still  be  a  thief.  My  chief 
offense  has  been  that  of  treason  to  the  law  of 
human  trust  and  confidence.  I  can  only  atone 
truly  by  ceasing  to  be  a  thief  and  becoming 
loyal  to  the  law  of  trust  and  confidence.  And  I 
will  be  restored  to  my  former  position  only 
when  I  have  convinced  my  employer  of  my  re- 
stored loyalty.  But  if  the  overt  breach  has  been 
made  in  the  order  that  is  highest,  there  is  then 
nothing  higher  from  which  to  make  real  atone- 
ment. The  sin  is  against  God  and  our  con- 
sciousness is  that  of  the  Psalmist,  **  against  thee 
and  thee  only  have  I  sinned  and  done  this  evil 
in  thy  sight."  The  soul  feels  that  for  such  an 
oif  ense  there  is  no  atonement  within  its  power ; 
it  cannot  repent  though  it  seek  it  with  tears. 
In  the  second  place,  light  will  be  shed  on  the 
reason  why  this  is  true  if  we  are  able  to  see 
that  sin  is  an  oif  ense  of  the  religious  conscious- 
ness. We  have  seen  that  the  religious  con- 
sciousness adds  a  new  spiritual  dimension  to 
life  in  the  light  by  which  life  is  seen  to  be 
transformed  by  its  relation  to  its  self-existent 
ground.  If  sin  be  an  offense  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  it  then  reveals  itself  as  a  breach 
in  the  Divine  foundation  of  the  soul's  existence. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       169 

It  is  disloyalty;  treason  to  the  Divine  Order  in 
which  its  life  has  its  deepest  roots.  The  result 
will  be  that  not  only  is  atonement  impossible 
from  the  standpoint  of  its  own  resources,  but 
also  that  the  poison  of  the  primal  sin  will  affect 
its  whole  being;  that  is,  its  being  as  a  whole 
and  every  part  of  it.  From  the  very  nature  of 
sin  it  follows  that  it  is  a  perversion  of  the  whole 
nature.  If  the  essence  of  sin  be  disloyalty  to 
the  highest,  the  effect  of  it  will  be  an  attitude 
of  will  that  will  pervert  and  turn  into  wrong 
channels  all  the  streams  of  its  being.  If  then, 
sin  be  an  evil  that  corrupts  the  whole  nature, 
and  if  the  soul  out  of  its  own  resources  cannot 
atone  for  it,  two  conclusions  seem  to  follow.  In 
the  first  place  it  is  clear  that  the  evil  of  sin  be- 
ing one  that  affects  the  whole  nature  of  man  in 
a  very  radical  way,  it  cannot  be  remedied  by  any 
kind  of  superficial  reform.  A  sinner  cannot 
make  himself  good  by  cutting  off  evil  habits, 
checking  evil  tendencies  or  even  holding  him- 
self in  check  by  a  strong  will.  We  feel  the 
superficiality  of  all  this.  What  the  sinner  needs 
is  salvation  and  salvation  will  always  involve 
atonement,  the  restoration  of  the  sinner  to  com- 
plete unity  with  the  highest.  This  will  make  an 
operation  that  will  radically  affect  his  whole 
nature.  In  the  second  place  it  will  follow  from 
this  that  if  the  sinner  cannot  save  himself  be- 
cause of  the  fact  that  sin  is  a  breach  of  the 
transcendent  order  of  his  being;  the  vicarious 
principle  must  enter  into  and  constitute  the 


170       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

constructive  feature  of  a  real  act  of  salvation. 
For  the  true  principle  of  vicarious  action  is  that 
of  the  entering  of  the  higher  into  the  life  of  the 
lower  in  order  that  the  lower  may  be  lifted  to 
the  plane  of  the  higher.  There  may  be  and  no 
doubt  is  vicarious  action  where  no  offense  has 
been  committed.  But  in  the  case  of  sin  and  sal- 
v^ation,  an  offense  has  been  committed  against 
the  highest  order  which  the  sinner  is  unable  to 
redress.  The  only  redress  possible  in  the  case 
is  for  someone  who  is  a  bearer  of  the  highest 
order  and  against  whose  nature  the  offense  has 
been  committed  to  identify  himself  in  some  way 
with  the  conscious  life  of  the  sinner  for  without 
this  identification  the  sin  could  not  be  atoned 
for,  as  without  it  it  could  not  have  been  com- 
mitted. He  will  be  able  to  do  this  in  the  first 
place  through  the  consciousness  of  perfect  unity 
in  himself  with  the  highest,  and  secondly 
through  perfect  sympathy  with  the  sinner  in  his 
sin  and  anguish.  This  will  make  it  possible  for 
him  to  bear  the  burden  of  the  sinner's  sin  and 
anguish  in  a  way  in  which  the  sinner  will  be- 
come conscious  that  he  bears  it  himself  through 
a  stronger  than  himself  that  he  feels  to  be  in 
him.  St.  Paul  says  it  is  no  longer  I  but  Christ 
that  dwells  in  me.  The  strength  of  vicarious 
atonement  is  in  the  consciousness  of  its  vicar- 
ious character  which  the  sinner  has  in  him. 
That  he  cannot  atone  but  that  he  is  being  vi- 
cariously atoned  is  the  saving  quality  of  his 
consciousness.    Now  this  is  the  great  transac- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       171 

tioii  on  which  in  its  transcendent  sense  the  sal- 
vation of  men  depends.  There  are,  however, 
many  relative  and  human  illustrations  of  the 
vicarious  principle  in  human  experience.  Royce 
has  shown  with  great  weight  how  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  community  which  has  been  thrown  in- 
to spiritual  confusion  by  the  rise  of  treason  in 
its  midst  to  the  highest,  may  be  restored  to  unity 
with  itself  by  the  vicarious  action  of  a  good 
man  whose  act  is  the  embodiment  of  the  tran- 
scendent principle.  In  simpler  form  the  same 
principle  is  exemplified  in  individual  instances. 
The  good  father  or  mother  who  follows  an  err- 
ing son  and  finally  by  their  sacrificing  love  are 
able  to  enter  into  the  conscious  life  of  the  son, 
as  a  stronger  and  elevating  force,  perform  a 
true  act  of  vicarious  atonement.  In  conclusion 
I  wish  to  make  two  observations.  In  the  first 
place  I  have  not  been  attempting  here  any 
apologetic  justification  of  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  the  atonement.  I  have  rather  followed 
out  logically  certain  deep  insights  and  philo- 
sophical considerations  which  lead  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  issues  which  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  atonement  is  designed  to  meet  are  the 
deepest  and  gravest  issues  of  man 's  nature.  If 
the  evil  of  sin  is  to  be  really  cured,  it  must  be  by 
measures  that  will  reform  the  very  foundations 
of  the  nature  of  man.  In  the  second  place  it  is 
clear,  I  think,  that  the  problem  of  sin  is  one  of 
the  religious  consciousness.  It  is  through  this 
consciousness   that   the    soul   achieves   a   new 


172       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

spiritual  dimension  and  gets  an  insight  into  the 
true  foundations  of  its  being.  It  is  only  in  the 
light  of  this  new  spiritual  dimension  that  one 
can  arrive  at  a  true  conception  of  sin,  and  it  is 
only  in  its  light  that  we  can  see  how  salvation 
from  sin  is  possible  and  how  the  highest  may 
interfere  vicariously  for  the  redemption  of  a 
soul  that  has  ruined  itself  through  disloyalty  to 
the  highest. 


Lecture  VIII.    The  Destiny  op  the  Soul 

We  saw,  in  the  last  lecture,  that  the  only  point 
of  view  from  which  death  could  be  lifted  from 
the  category  of  irremediable  evils  was  that  of 
an  interpretation  of  life  in  the  light  of  its  ideal 
values.  Is  any  such  interpretation  possible? 
We  are  free  to  answer  that  it  will  be  possible, 
if  we  can  find  sufficient  reason  for  the  convic- 
tion that  our  life,  in  its  very  constitution,  is  such 
as  to  ignore  and  cancel  any  proposed  limits  of 
time  and  sense.  If  time  and  sense  limits  are 
purely  empirical,  and,  in  a  real  sense,  physical, 
it  may  then  be  that,  in  our  doctrine  of  the  soul 's 
life,  as  transcending  the  empirical,  we  will  find 
the  transcendent  point  of  view  for  which  we  are 
searching.  Now,  that  time  and  sense  are  em- 
pirical, and,  in  a  real  sense,  physical,  is  a  propo- 
sition that  is,  I  think,  open  to  proof.  There  is 
no  question  about  the  senses.  Every  man  who 
admits  the  limit  of  sense  to  the  possibility  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION       173 

knowledge  is  an  empiricist  who  believes  in  the 
one  order ;  that  of  perception.  But  that  time  is 
purely  empirical  and  physical  is  more  open  to 
debate.  In  dealing  with  the  problem  of  time  in 
this  connection,  we  will  be  helped,  I  think,  by 
the  analytic  insight  of  Henri  Bergson,  who  dis- 
tinguishes between  time  as  succession,  and  non- 
serial  time  as  duration.  The  metaphysical  con- 
cept of  time  is  that  of  duration,  which  is  exis- 
tence apart  from  any  distinction  of  moments  or 
measures  of  lapse.  Time  only  becomes  a  suc- 
cession of  moments  when  we  apply  to  it  the 
linear  measure  of  space.  Time  has  no  dimen- 
sion, but,  as  a  series,  it  has  been  spatialized  by 
fitting  it  into  the  linear  dimension  of  space. 
This  phenomenalizes  it  by  adapting  it  to  the 
changes  of  the  world,  and  it  imparts  to  it  physi- 
cal character  in  spatializing  it,  since  space  is  the 
form  of  the  physical  which  imparts  to  it  dimen- 
sion and  capacity  for  mathematical  measure- 
ment. So,  when  we  apply  the  serial  measure  to 
consciousness,  we  thereby  translate  it  out  of 
pure  time,  which  is  duration,  and  render  it 
physical  by  introducing  its  pulses  into  the 
measures  of  space. 

Now,  without  developing  this  doctrine  fur- 
ther, or  committing  myself  to  all  the  Bergson- 
ian  deductions  from  it,  I  wish  to  point  out  a 
sense  in  which  it  seems  to  me  not  only  to  be 
true,  but  also  vitally  important.  If  we  take 
our  consciousness  in  its  higher  dimension; — 
that  is,  in  terms  of  its  self-conscious  activity  of 


174        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

thinking,  we  will  find  that,  in  no  sense,  does  it 
follow  the  linear  order  of  the  time  series.  The 
activity  is  one  that  is  self -centralizing,  and  all 
the  moments  are  internal  to  the  conscious  life 
of  the  self.  It  is  only  when  we  throw  our 
thoughts  out, — that  is,  make  them  terms  in  a 
space-world,  that  they  take  on  the  form  of  the 
series.  They  really  occupy  a  place  in  space,  and 
are,  so  far,  physical.  The  life  of  the  soul,  there- 
fore, as  it  is  lived  in  serial  time  and  space,  is 
a  physical  life  which  pertains  to  the  body.  It 
naturally  and  logically  ends  with  the  dissolution 
of  the  body,  therefore,  and  supplies  no  point  of 
departure  for  any  doctrine  of  survival.  I  do 
not  think  that,  from  the  empirical  point  of  view, 
any  doctrine  of  survival  can  be  logically  de- 
fended. It  is  only  when  we  deny  the  sufficiency 
of  the  empirical  point  of  view,  and,  recognizing 
the  validity  of  the  distinction  we  have  drawn 
between  the  empirical  self  and  the  real  self,  that 
we  will  begin  to  see  the  grounds  of  a  logic  that 
goes  beyond  the  limits  of  the  empirical.  Let  us 
attempt  to  develop  a  little  ways  the  logic  of  the 
position  we  have  here  reached.  If  the  serial 
time-form  is  a  form  of  the  physical,  then  to  rep- 
resent consciousness  as  a  simply  flowing  stream 
is  to  picture  it  as  a  physical  phenomenon.  The 
physical  is  decomposable,  and  it  is  by  decompo- 
sition that  death  occurs  to  the  body.  If  con- 
sciousness is  physical,  it  will  be  decomposable 
in  the  same  way.  Death  will  be  the  end  of  both 
soul  and  body.    And  I  submit  that  this  is  the 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       175 

only  point  of  view  from  which  the  mortality  of 
the  soul  can  be  affirmed.  It  must  first  be  re- 
duced to  the  terms  of  physical  existence ;  it  will 
then  be  reasonable  to  conclude  that,  like  the 
body,  it  is  perishable.  It  is  a  matter  of  vital 
importance  that  we  should  have  reached  this 
conclusion,  since,  from  any  other  point  of  view 
than  that  which  identifies  the  soul-life  with  that 
of  the  physical,  the  question  as  to  its  survival 
of  the  dissolution  of  the  body  is  open. 

Let  us,  then,  consider  the  bearings  which  the 
doctrine  of  the  soul  we  have  already  found  rea- 
son to  accept  will  naturally  have  on  the  prob- 
lem of  survival.  We  have  already  attained  to 
one  or  two  conclusions  which  will  have  an  im- 
portant bearing  here.  In  the  first  place,  we 
have  seen  that  the  real  self  transcends  the  em- 
pirical and  physical  by  the  measure  of  a  whole 
dimension;  that  it  refuses  to  conform  to  the 
serial  world,  and  unifies  itself  around  a  self- 
centre,  and  claims  for  itself  a  stable  and  abiding 
existence.  Looking  at  it  from  this  angle,  we  see 
a  self-centred  life  that  is  maintaining  the  in- 
tegrity of  its  existence  through  the  broken  and 
perishable  order  of  its  empirical  existence. 
This  is  something  that  wholly  transcends  the 
empirical,  and  from  the  empirical  point  of  view 
is  incomprehensible.  Again,  we  have  seen  that, 
in  the  light  of  the  religious  consciousness,  the 
soul  achieves  a  new  dimension  of  spiritual  in- 
sight, which  enables  it  to  see  itself  in  the  light 
of  its  transcendent  origin.    The  insight  here  is 


176       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

into  the  eternal  life  of  the  self-existent  ground, 
into  which  the  soul  enters  and  participates  by 
virtue  of  its  religious  heritage.  That  the  soul, 
from  the  standpoint  of  its  religious  conscious- 
ness, becomes  the  bearer  of  a  life  that  constitu- 
tionally transcends  the  physical  measures  of 
time  and  sense  is  so  apparent  as  to  require  little 
further  elucidation.  But  all  that  follows  will 
be,  in  a  sense,  but  the  elaboration  of  that  propo- 
sition. 

Let  us  ask  again  here  the  question,  what  is 
the  real  life  of  the  soul;  the  life  that  is  most 
characteristic  of  it?  Do  we  say  that  it  is  living 
a  life  worthy  of  its  nature  when  it  is  seeking  its 
whole  satisfaction  in  the  perishable  things  of 
the  present,  or  when  it  simply  follows  the  dic- 
tates of  prudence  for  this  present  life,  and  lays 
up  material  treasures  alone  to  the  neglect  of 
the  more  spiritual  values  ?  Or  even  when  it  re- 
sponds to  the  moral  side  of  life  to  the  extent  of 
obeying  the  laws  of  honesty,  truthfulness, 
purity  and  fair  dealing, — do  we  say,  even  then, 
that  the  soul  has  filled  out  the  full  measure  of 
a  life-ideal  that  can  be  taken  as  permanently 
satisfactory?  To  all  of  these  questions  we  will 
be  constrained  to  return  a  negative  answer. 
What  is  sometimes  called  mere  morality, — that 
is,  a  point  of  view  that  is  satisfied  with  the  ful- 
fillment of  ordinary  moral  obligation,  will  not 
save  a  soul  that  is  fully  awake  to  its  real  con- 
dition and  needs.  Nor  can  we  say  that  the  soul 
can  find  the  ideal  of  its  true  life  in  the  terms 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION       177 

of  ethical  culture,  however  exalted  they  may  be. 
The  whole  trend  of  the  ideals  of  the  ethical 
schools  may  be  in  the  line  of  the  soul's  true  de- 
velopment. They  may  nurture  a  life-ideal  that 
is  rich  in  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  the  high- 
est forms  of  personal  and  social  good.  They 
may  nurture  the  sense  of  a  value  in  life  that  is 
higher  than  mere  happiness;  that  places  the 
highest  excellence  at  the  pinnacle  of  achieve- 
ment. Even  then,  if  these  ideals  are  restricted 
to  the  sphere  of  humanistic  limits,  and  are  not 
touched  with  the  sense  of  transcendence,  I  think 
we  will  have  to  say  that  they  do  not  fill  out  the 
measure  of  a  life  that  is  completely  satisfac- 
tory. Why  do  we  insist  on  this?  Not  that  we 
do  not  fall  in  with  most  of  the  positive  content 
of  the  teaching  of  the  leading  ehtical  culturists ; 
for  our  entire  criticism  of  their  programs  has 
for  its  motive  the  belief  that  they  show  a  cer- 
tain lack  of  insights  that  are  of  vital  impor- 
tance. The  central  contention  of  these  lectures 
is;  that  man  is,  by  nature,  a  religious  being; 
that  his  religious  consciousness  opens  up  to  him 
a  new  dimension  of  life ;  that  the  insights  of  this 
new  spiritual  dimension  transform  all  the  other 
issues  of  his  life,  so  that  he  becomes,  in  his  es- 
sential activities,  a  religious  being;  so  that 
ideals  that  will  meet  the  full  requirements  of 
his  life  must  give  satisfaction  to  his  religious 
nature;  that  they  can  do  this  only  when  they 
are  developed  in  the  light  of  the  highest  that  is 
in  man, — in  the  light  of  the  insight  which  the 


178        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

soul  has  into  the  self-existent  ground  of  its 
being,  and  into  the  fact  that  it  attains  its  high- 
est only  when  it  realizes,  in  its  consciousness, 
its  identity  with  the  most  fundamental  order  of 
the  world.  If  we  have  here  sketched  the  funda- 
mental conditions  of  the  soul's  realization  of  its 
highest  good,  then  the  conclusion  follows  that 
the  highest  life  is  that  of  religion ;  that  no  pro- 
gram of  life  can  be  completely  satisfactory  in 
which  the  ideals  of  religion  do  not  hold  the  cen- 
tral place. 

Now,  this  conclusion  has  been  reached  here 
not  alone  in  the  interests  of  the  life  of  religion. 
Rather,  our  chief  aim  has  been  to  show  that  it 
is  only  from  the  standpoint  of  the  life  of  re- 
ligion that  any  very  certain  conclusions  can  be 
reached  regarding  the  destiny  of  the  soul.  This 
I  mean  to  be  taken  broadly,  as  not  involving  any 
issue  between  religion  and  rational  reflection, 
but  rather  as  indicating  that  it  is  only  when 
philosophy  avails  itself  of  the  insights  of  the 
religious  consciousness  that  it  is  in  a  position  to 
grasp  the  problem  in  its  fullest  significance. 
One  thing  may  be  taken,  I  think,  as  settled ;  that 
a  philosophy  that  confines  itself  to  the  physical 
limits  of  time  and  sense  has  no  problem  on  its 
hands;  or,  if  it  succeeds  in  formulating  one,  it 
is  cut  off  by  its  limitations  from  the  data  of  a 
true  solution.  How,  then,  can  the  data  of  a 
hopeful  solution  be  reached?  In  the  first  place, 
to  revert  to  our  discussions  in  the  lecture  on  the 
nature  of  the  soul,  we  will  find  it  necessary  to 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       179 

be  in  earnest  with  the  distinction  we  have  there 
worked  out  between  the  real  and  the  empirical 
self.  We  found  there  that,  while,  empirically, 
the  self  may  be  represented  as  a  transient  fea- 
ture of  a  flowing  stream  of  conscious  existence, 
in  reality  the  soul  that  cognizes  the  flowing 
stream  must  itself  have  an  abiding  stand  on  the 
rock  of  permanent  being.  We  saw  that  the  em- 
piricist, who  applies  his  solvent  analysis  to  the 
self,  has  unconsciously  reserved  the  self  with 
which  he  has  identified  himself  as  the  observer. 
This  observer-consciousness  that  pronounces  all 
the  judgments  is  not  the  self  that  is  judged,  else 
no  judgments  would  be  possible.  We  saw,  also, 
that  it  is  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
synthesis  between  the  empirical  and  the  real 
that  the  true  teleological  motive  of  the  whole 
living  activity  of  consciousness  can  be  interpre- 
ted. So  viewed,  it  becomes  a  struggle  up  from 
the  fragmentary  and  unstable  to  the  ground  of 
the  unbroken  and  stable ;  and  it  is  only  as  this 
struggle  is  successful  that  the  abiding  satisfac- 
tion of  life  is  attained.  If  we  add  to  this  the 
fact  that  this  effort  is  only  unconditionally  suc- 
cessful when,  through  the  insight  of  religion, 
the  soul  is  able  to  see  its  relation  to  its  self- 
existent  and  transcendent  ground ;  for  it  is  only 
through  this  insight  that  it  is  able  to  fix  its  own 
life  on  the  rock  of  essential  existence, — if,  I 
say,  we  add  this  insight,  we  will  then  be  in  pos- 
session of  the  data  that  will  enable  us  to  work 
out  a  true  philosophy  of  life,  in  the  light  of 


180        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

which  we  may  throw  some  light  on  the  mystery 
of  death. 

For,  if  these  data  enable  us  to  put  a  rational 
construction  on  life,  it  is  very  likely  that  we  will 
find  in  them  a  clue  to  the  interpretation  of  the 
ideal  values  of  life.  We  have  seen  that  the  evils 
that  afflict  the  life  of  man  can  be  understood 
only  in  view  of  the  ideal  values  of  life.  Now, 
all  these  values  we  have  summed  up  in  the 
phrase,  permanent  satisfaction.  What,  then, 
are  the  permanent  satisfactions  of  life?  I  do 
not  propose  here  to  enter  upon  a  task  of  enu- 
meration, but  rather  to  seek  some  criterion  that 
will  enable  us  to  determine  what  a  satisfaction 
must  be  in  order  to  be  permanent.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  mere  tautology  to  say  that  nothing 
can  give  permanent  satisfaction  that  perishes  in 
the  using;  and,  by  perishing  in  the  using,  we 
mean,  superficially,  the  object  that  does  not 
last,  like  a  feast  which  mil  be  eaten  up.  More 
profoundly,  we  mean  the  decay  of  our  capacity 
for  obtaining  satisfaction  from  any  such  source. 
In  the  scope  of  our  teleological  proposition, 
however,  we  find  a  judgment  of  condemnation 
on  all  those  projects  of  life  that  are  foredoomed 
to  failure  from  the  fact  that  the  transient  will 
cease  to  be  sweet  and  will  turn  into  the  ashes  of 
bitterness.  But,  passing  on  to  the  more  serious 
aspects  of  the  problem :  another  criterion  of  the 
permanently  satisfactory  is  its  transcendence, 
in  its  essential  power  to  satisfy,  of  all  the  acci- 
dents of  time  and  sense.    Wealth  may  satisfy, 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       181 

and  the  pursuit  of  it  may  be  still  more  attrac- 
tive; but  it  is  liable  to  accident;  we  never  pos- 
sess it  with  absolute  security,  and,  even  when 
we  extend  its  satisfaction  to  the  utmost  limit,  it 
must  cease  with  this  life  of  time  and  sense. 
Much  more  durable  are  the  satisfactions  yielded 
by  a  good  education  or  a  character  of  solid  ex- 
cellence. These,  however,  owe  their  superior 
excellence  to  the  fact  that  they  are  relatively  in- 
dependent of  time  and  sense,  and  belong  to  the 
category  of  spiritual  values.  Now,  when  I  say 
that  there  is  no  one  that  will  regard  either  the 
perishable  or  the  relatively  permanent  as  meet- 
ing the  highest  demands  of  the  soul,  I  mean,  of 
course,  no  one  that  has  come  to  any  true  reali- 
zation of  himself ;  such  realization,  for  example, 
as  comes  in  the  time  of  great  calamity  or  the 
imminence  of  death.  There  is  no  one  that  will 
find  in  these  things,  at  such  moments  as  these, 
that  which  will  permanently  satisfy  the  soul. 
We  strike  the  deepest  note  when  we  put  the 
question, — what  alone  will  the  soul  regard  as  un- 
conditionally valuable  in  these  moments  of 
deepest  realization'?  It  is  very  significant  that 
the  goods  of  time  and  sense  are  like  straws 
which  the  soul  grasps  in  vain.  The  true  in- 
stinct of  life,  which  is  hidden  in  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances, asserts  itself,  and  the  soul  seeks 
the  abiding  that  is  higher  than  itself.  It  is  the 
religious  consciousness  that  asserts  itself  here ; 
the  soul,  in  the  attitude  of  death,  so  far  as  the 
empirical  is  concerned,  arouses  to  its  real  life, 


182       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

and  cries  out  to  the  source  of  its  existence. 
There  can  be  no  mistaking  the  significance  of 
this  experience.  The  soul,  when  the  world  is 
going  well  with  it,  and  its  eyes  are  holden  from 
the  deeper  things  of  life,  may  satisfy  itself  with 
any  mess  of  pottage;  but  there  comes  a  time 
when  all  the  cups  of  enjoyment  are  shattered, 
and  the  skull  and  bones  appear  at  the  end  of  the 
broken  feast ;  then  the  soul  realizes  its  true  na- 
ture, its  deeper  needs  begin  to  clamor,  and  it 
realizes  that,  after  all,  the  only  destiny  that  will 
satisfy  its  cravings  is  an  immortal  one.  The 
soul,  in  its  real  life,  is  a  three-dimensional 
spiritual  being.  Its  deepest  insights,  and,  con- 
sequently, its  deepest  ideals,  are  those  of  re- 
ligion. This  is  true  of  the  lower  stages  of  its 
existence,  though  it  does  not  realize  the  truth; 
for  the  religious  insight  alone  explains  the  fact 
that  creature  goods  cannot  satisfy;  that  it  is 
the  sense  for  the  highest  that  sends  it  out  on 
that  unending  search  for  good  that  is  the  most 
significant  feature  of  its  life. 

In  ancient  philosophy,  the  most  cogent  proofs 
of  immortality  were  two  of  Plato's,  which  he 
presents  in  various  parts  of  his  works.  One  is 
founded  on  the  substantial  nature  of  the  soul,  as 
what  he  calls  the  self-moving  principle  of  mo- 
tion. Now,  we  have  found  in  our  study  that  it 
is  necessary  to  ascribe  to  the  soul  the  principle 
of  self-activity.  No  soul-life  would  be  possible 
without  real  initiative,  and  we  have  seen  that 
real   initiative   is   self-initiative.     If   this   ex- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       183 

presses  the  substantial  nature  of  the  soul,  it  is 
clear  that  Plato  has  seized  on  a  fact  that  has 
great  significance  in  its  bearing  on  the  problem 
of  the  soul's  life.  The  principal  reason  why,  in 
physics,  science  is  obliged  to  assume  the  inde- 
structibility of  matter  is  that,  as  we  have  al- 
ready pointed  out,  existence  implies  self-exis- 
tence as  its  ground.  Hence,  if  matter  is  to  be 
postulated  as  permanent,  it  must  involve  in  it 
the  self-existent.  Science,  however,  is  not  inter- 
ested in  this  implication  of  its  assumption.  The 
insight  to  which  science  is  blind  rests  at  the 
foundation  of  Plato's  proof.  He  says  that  the 
soul,  having  in  it  the  self -moving  principle  of 
motion,  cannot  perish.  In  the  light  of  our  own 
previous  conclusions,  we  are  able  to  see  that 
Plato  affirms,  with  intelligent  insight,  what 
science  implies  without  insight ;  only  we  are  not 
able  to  say  whether  Plato's  affirmation  was 
made  in  the  light  of  the  last  insight  in  this 
field, — namely,  that  it  is  only  when  that  which 
is  not  the  spring  of  its  own  existence,  lays  hold 
upon  its  self-existent  ground  that  its  immor- 
tality can  be  affirmed.  It  is  a  three-dimensional 
spiritual  insight  that  rests  at  the  foundation  of 
the  proof,  and  makes  it  valid  as  the  soul's  as- 
sertion of  its  own  existential  prerogative. 

The  second  proof  of  Plato  is  founded  on  the 
principle  of  his  idealism; — namely,  that  it  is 
the  true  prerogative  of  the  soul  to  contemplate 
the  highest  truth.  These  truths  are  the  first 
and  eternal  principles  of  things,  and  the  soul's 


184       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

knowledge  of  them  is  direct  and  immediate.  It 
is  clear  here  that  Plato  expresses  a  principle 
that  we  have  become  familiar  with  in  our  study 
of  religious  knowledge.  There  we  saw  that  the 
whole  activity  of  knowledge,  when  viewed  from 
the  standpoint  of  its  ontological  motive,  is  to 
be  regarded  as  a  movement  from  the  fragment- 
ary and  perishable  order  of  its  empirical  life  to 
an  unseen  and  permanent  order  of  truth  and  re- 
ality. In  the  course  of  this  movement,  the  soul 
is  consciously  in  the  way  of  realizing  its  ideal 
destiny.  Now,  Plato  states  this  proof  in  the 
intellectual  form;  but,  in  the  light  of  his  ideas, 
which  are  ethical  as  well  as  logical,  the  proof 
is  capable  of  the  broader  construction  we  have 
given  it,  when  we  pointed  out  that  the  same 
movement  is  found  at  the  heart  of  the  emotional 
and  volitional  struggles  of  the  soul's  life.  The 
force  of  the  proof  will  appear  when  it  is  con- 
cretely and  broadly  stated.  It  is  founded  on  an 
insight  into  the  fact  that  the  inner  movement  of 
the  soul's  life  is  away  from  the  temporal  and 
perishable  elements  of  existence  to  those  that 
are  eternal  and  perdurable.  In  the  light  of  the 
insights  that  are  open  to  us,  the  theoretic  co- 
gency of  these  proofs  is  unmistakable. 

There  is  another  proof  of  a  different  char- 
acter which  Plato  cites,  the  principle  of  which 
is  this;  that,  since  the  whole  of  the  existent 
has  been  made  after  the  idea  of  the  good;  this 
establishes  the  realization  of  the  good  as  the 
end-category  of  the  world-system  as  a  whole. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  KELIGION        185 

Now,  the  soul  is  the  apex  of  the  creation;  that 
in  which,  what  it  has  had  at  its  heart  from  the 
beginning  has  come  to  realization.  It  would  be 
contradicting  the  good  and  would  spell  its  de- 
feat, were  the  soul  itself  to  prove  mortal  and 
perishable.  This  we  see  clearly  in  an  inference 
from  the  soul 's  value  as  the  highest  term  in  the 
realization  of  life  to  the  immortal  and  imperish- 
able quality  of  its  existence.  The  force  of  this, 
which  has  been  felt  by  great  thinkers  in  mod- 
ern times,  is  obvious,  and  will  come  up  again 
for  consideration.  The  Platonic  proofs  we  have 
cited  have  never,  in  fact,  been  set  aside.  We 
have  a  restatement  of  them  under  the  episte- 
mological  category  of  probability  in  Cicero,  and 
they  dominated  the  thought  of  the  middle  ages. 
When  the  modern  mind  broke  away  from  me- 
diaevalism,  and  set  out  on  its  own  independent 
pathway,  it  still  carried  some  of  the  old  heritage 
with  it.  For  example,  the  first  fruitful  stage  of 
our  modern  thinking  may  be  called  the  period 
of  substantialism.  It  includes  Descartes,  Spi- 
noza, and,  in  a  modified  sense,  Locke,  Liebnitz, 
and  his  German  successors  before  Kant.  It  was 
Hume  that  cleared  the  field  of  substance,  and 
opened  the  way  for  empiricism.  If  we  study 
this  age  of  substantialism,  we  find  that  its 
thought  was  dominated  by  the  ontological  proof 
of  the  existence  of  God,  and  what  Kant  called 
the  dogmatic,  rationalistic  proof  of  the  inunor- 
tality  of  the  soul.  The  form  of  this  latter  proof 
which  brought  it  under  Kant's  criticism  was 


186       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

that  of  Mendelssohn,  one  of  Wolff's  successors, 
who  argued  from  the  substantiality  of  the  soul 
to  its  spiritual  unity  and  indestructibility.  Now, 
Mendelssohn  had,  perhaps,  lost  some  of  the  in- 
sight of  the  early  thinkers,  and  Kant's  task  was 
comparatively  easy. 

But,  if  we  go  back  to  Descartes  and  Spinoza, 
we  will  find  a  basis  for  proof  that  is  not  lacking 
in  cogency.  As  I  have  pointed  out  in  another 
connection,  the  principle  of  the  ontological 
proof  of  God's  existence  is  the  same  in  both 
Descartes  and  Spinoza ;  that  of  the  self-evident 
or  necessity  of  the  self-existent.  This  is  in- 
volved in  the  concept  of  substance,  and  is  ap- 
plied in  the  same  sense  to  the  soul  by  both  these 
great  thinkers.  For  Descartes'  distinction  be- 
tween created  and  uncreated  substance,  and  his 
identification  of  the  soul  with  created  substance 
that  has  only  God  for  its  presupposition,  while 
formally  repudiated  by  Spinoza,  is  accepted  in 
principle  in  his  doctrine  of  the  soul  as  a  mode 
of  the  Divine  thinking,  having  only  the  arche- 
typal thought  in  the  mind  of  God  as  its  antece- 
dent. 

What  I  wish  to  say  in  this  connection  is  that, 
in  the  light  of  a  distinction  with  which  we  are 
now  familiar,  between  the  self -active  substance 
of  the  soul,  and  the  self-existent  ground  of  its 
existence,  a  clear  basis  can  be  found  in  the  sub- 
stantialism  of  Descartes  and  Spinoza  for  a  co- 
gent proof  of  immortality.  We  have  seen  that 
the  soul  gets  a  true  insight  into  the  nature  of 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       187 

its  own  being  only  when  it  identifies  itself  with 
the  self -existent  ground  of  its  existence.  In  the 
light  of  this  three-dimensional  insight,  the  con- 
viction of  the  permanency  of  its  own  essential 
being  ripens  into  certitude.  If  these  old  think- 
ers had  realized  this,  which  they  did  in  princi- 
ple, they  could  have  built  up  a  cogent  argument 
upon  its  basis,  for  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 
They  could  have  contended  that,  inasmuch  as 
the  soul  is  a  substance  in  the  sense  that,  as 
Plato  says,  it  contains  the  self -moving  principle 
of  motion,  and  inasmuch  as  the  soul  only  attains 
the  true  ground  of  its  life  when,  through  the 
ontological  insight,  it  seeks  to  identify  itself 
with  the  self -existent  ground  of  its  existence,  it 
may  be  concluded  that  its  true  life  is  a  life  with 
and  in  God,  and  that  the  life,  all  of  whose 
springs  are  permanent,  will  itself  be  permanent 
and  eternal.  It  was  open  to  Mendelssohn  to 
build  up  such  a  proof,  but  he  was  able  to  find  no 
cogent  proof  of  the  substantiality  of  the  soul, 
and  the  task  of  Kant  in  showing  that  his  whole 
reasoning  is  a  paralogism  was  made  easy. 

Whatever  we  may  think  of  Kant's  critical 
doctrine  of  substance,  the  outcome  of  it  is  very 
significant.  The  notion  of  substance  is  treated 
by  Kant  epistemologically ;  that  is,  as  a  factor 
in  knowledge.  He  has  shown  that,  epistemo- 
logically, it  is  the  principle  of  the  permanent 
which  all  knowledge  demands  for  its  founda- 
tion. Kant  probably  did  not  realize  all  the  im- 
plications of  his  doctrine.    But  we  can  see,  in 


188       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

the  light  of  our  own  studies,  that  the  notion  of 
substance,  as  the  necessary  ground  of  knowl- 
edge, is  easily  translatable  into  terms  of  the 
inner  ontological  motive  of  knowledge, — a  mo- 
tive that  forbids  the  noetic  activity  in  man  to 
rest  until  it  has  anchored  the  whole  of  knowl- 
edge in  the  permanent. 

When  this  has  been  seen,  the  deeper  meta- 
physical significance  of  the  principle  will  ap- 
pear. The  soul,  not  alone  in  its  noetic  activity, 
but  in  the  whole  movement  of  its  being,  is  obey- 
ing a  three-dimensional  insight  which  leads  it 
to  see  that  it  can  live  its  true  life  only  when  it 
follows  the  religious  light  of  the  higher  reason, 
and  identifies  itself  with  the  self-existent  ground 
of  its  being.  Kant  had  some  insight  into  this 
when  he  came  to  the  problem  of  the  moral  con- 
sciousness, of  which  we  will  have  something  to 
say  later. 

It  only  remained  for  the  post-Kantians  to  de- 
velop the  insight  that  the  real  is  not  identical 
with  the  notion  of  substance  as  the  unstamped 
material  of  being  that  gives  it  permanence,  but 
that  it  is  individual,  and,  as  the  permanent  in 
being,  must  bear  the  individual  stamp. 

There  is  not  time  here  to  point  out  how,  be- 
ginning in  its  Socratic  form  with  individuality 
in  its  subjective  aspect,  the  concept  freed  itself 
from  its  subjective  limitations,  and  took  on  the 
universal,  ontological  form  in  the  thought  of 
Hegel.  Since  Hegel,  the  concept  of  substance, 
as  held  by  the  early  rationalists,  has  passed  into 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  EELIGION        189 

that  of  individuality;  which  is  simply  that  of 
the  permanent  in  existence,  with  the  stamp  of 
the  highest  reality  upon  it.  The  real  is  the 
concrete  universal  of  being,  and  the  later 
thought  has  on  its  hands  the  problem  of  deter- 
mining the  final  relation  of  the  self-conscious 
individuality  of  man  to  the  individuality  of  the 
self-existent  or  absolute. 

Now,  the  way  is  open  to  Pantheism  here  if 
one  wishes  to  enter.  But,  as  I  have  contended 
elsewhere,  it  is  open  to  us  to  accept  the  princi- 
ple of  this  doctrine  of  individuality  as  the  con- 
crete universal  without  becoming  pantheists. 
We  have  only  to  recognize  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  soul  of  man; — the  finite  individual, 
and  the  absolute  self-existent  individual  in 
order  to  see  that,  at  the  highest  point  of  the 
soul's  experience,  it  may,  and  does,  in  fact,  iden- 
tify itself  with  the  absolute,  so  that  the  abso- 
lute life  becomes  its  own,  and  the  absolute  in- 
sight becomes  its  own  insight,  without  thereby 
losing  its  own  individuality  or  the  sense  of  it. 
In  fact,  it  is  in  those  moments  of  highest  reali- 
zation that  the  lineaments  of  its  true  individu- 
ality stand  out  in  the  clearest  light.  We  seem 
here  to  come  upon  the  great  paradox  of  the  in- 
dividual consciousness ;  namely,  that  it  is  in  the 
moment  when  we  rise  to  the  clearest  insight  into 
our  own  identity  with  what  we  may  call,  para- 
phrasing Emerson's  phrase,  our  over-individu- 
ality, that  we  have  the  strongest  sense  of  our 
own  individuality  which,  in  the  terms  of  an  out- 


190       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

side  logic,  ought  to  be  completely  absorbed  at 
that  point.  The  truth  of  the  paradox  is,  how- 
ever, incontrovertible. 

I  think  I  have  given  a  suflScient  statement  of 
the  theoretic  proofs  of  the  soul's  immortality, 
and  will  now  turn  to  another  phase  of  the  prob- 
lem. We  have  made  clear,  in  another  place,  that 
life  is  to  be  estimated  in  terms  of  its  ideal 
values.  That  the  question  of  value  cannot  be 
absolutely  separated  from  that  of  theoretic 
truth  I  have  already  contended.  But  it  is  not 
altogether  identical  with  it,  either.  One  may 
despair  of  theoretic  proof,  and  yet  be  con- 
vinced by  the  worth  of  the  consideration.  That 
the  truth  of  immortality  may  be  postulated  on 
the  ground  of  its  value  is  the  principle  of 
Plato's  teleological  proof  of  immortality.  If 
the  end  of  the  creation  is  the  good,  and  the  good 
reaches  its  highest  expression  in  the  soul  of 
man ;  it  would  mean  the  defeat  of  the  good  and 
the  lapse  of  the  whole  scheme  of  creation  into 
irrationality,  if  we  were  to  suppose  the  soul 
itself  to  be  mortal  and  perishable.  The  integ- 
rity of  the  whole  system  of  reality  is  staked  on 
the  perdurability  of  the  soul.  That  this  is  a 
strong  consideration  is  evident. 

Again,  when  Kant,  having  critically  under- 
mined the  theoretic  proofs,  appeals  to  the  con- 
sideration of  moral  value,  and  argues  that  the 
worth  of  the  moral  order  of  the  world  is  so 
great  that  whatever  is  an  essential  condition 
of  its  realization  must  be  postulated  as  true,  he 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       191 

appeals  to  the  same  principle.  Kant  sees  very 
clearly  that  to  impose  a  moral  destiny  on  a  be- 
ing whose  life  is  mortal  and  perishable,  wonld 
involve  a  glaring  contradiction  before  which  the 
obligation-ness  of  the  moral  would  be  destroyed. 
But  moral  values  are  the  highest,  and,  in  order 
to  prevent  a  kind  of  treason  to  the  highest,  a 
life  must  be  ascribed  to  the  soul  that  will  be 
commensurate  with  its  highest  ideals.  Kant  is 
here  proceeding  on  ground  that  has  become  fa- 
miliar to  us. 

Let  us  turn  from  Kant  to  the  philosophy  of 
modern  evolution  for  our  last  example  of  reas- 
oning along  this  line.  The  late  John  Fiske,  in 
his  little  book  entitled  *'The  Destiny  of  Man," 
practically  espouses  the  value-argument  of 
Plato.  Fiske,  in  his  earlier  treatise  on  **The 
Idea  of  God,"  had  developed  a  theistic  concep- 
tion of  evolution,  in  which,  like  Plato,  he  con- 
nects the  whole  evolution  process  with  the  reali- 
zation of  a  good  purpose.  His  argument  in 
''The  Destiny  of  Man,"  assumes  this  theism  as 
its  basis,  and,  taking  the  ground,  as  Plato  did, 
that,  in  the  soul  of  man,  the  whole  evolution  pro- 
cess reaches  its  culmination,  and  reveals  what 
has  been  at  its  heart  from  the  beginning,  he 
argues  that  to  suppose  that  this  outcome  should 
itself  be  mortal  and  perishable,  would  be  an 
affront  to  the  reason  of  man.  God  would  not 
so  affront  the  intelligence  of  man,  and  bring 
the  creation  to  a  conclusion  so  irrational.  On 
the  strength  of  this  consideration  alone,  Fiske 


192        PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

subscribes  to  a  belief  in  the  immortality  of  the 
soul. 

Now,  whether  we  be  convinced  or  not  by  con- 
siderations that  were  convincing  to  Plato,  Kant 
and  Fiske,  we  will  be  ready  to  admit  the  force 
of  the  moral  and  teleological  argument.  Its 
true  force  will  appear,  however,  if  we  maintain 
its  connection  with  the  theoretic  proofs.  If  the 
soul  is  immortal  in  its  nature,  then  its  immortal- 
ity ought  to  shine  through  every  true  insight  in- 
to its  nature.  This  seems  to  be  literally  true; 
for,  whether  our  insight  be  into  the  true  essence 
of  the  soul's  life,  or  into  the  significance  of  the 
end  values  which  it  places  before  itself,  it  will 
lead  us  to  the  same  conclusion,  that  the  true 
concept  of  the  soul  is  that  of  a  being  whose  life, 
while  lived  empirically  in  a  world  of  time  and 
sense,  and  subject  to  its  contingency,  is  yet,  in 
its  essential  nature,  as  well  as  in  its  life-ideals, 
a  being  that  transcends  these  limits,  and  lays 
hold  on  that  which  is  abiding  and  eternal. 

At  the  conclusion  of  this  lecture,  I  wish  to 
point  out  certain  conclusions  which  may  be 
drawn  from  what  has  preceded.  In  the  first 
place,  we  will,  perhaps,  experience  a  feeling  of 
surprise  in  view  of  the  strength  of  the  consider- 
ations which  the  resources  of  philosophy  enable 
us  to  bring  to  bear  on  the  problem  of  the  soul's 
immortality.  These  resources  are  a  treasure 
that  must  be  mined  for,  and  the  tendency  is  very 
strong  to  assume  that,  because  the  gold  is  not 
lying  around  on  the  surface,  it  does  not  exist. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION       193 

What  lies  on  the  surface  is  mortal  and  perish- 
able, and  the  tendency  is  to  conclude  that  all 
life  is  doomed  to  perish.  When,  however,  we  go 
beneath  the  surface,  the  deeper  we  mine  the 
more  assurances  we  find  that  life,  in  its  pro- 
founder  aspects,  is  different;  that  the  soul,  in 
the  light  of  its  essential  nature,  as  well  as  in 
that  of  its  end-values,  is  the  bearer  of  a  tran- 
scendent life,  and  is  a  natural  heir  to  immor- 
tality. 

In  the  second  place,  I  think  the  results  of  our 
mining  will  enable  us  to  throw  a  side  light  on 
the  absolute  assurance  that  existed  in  the  mind 
of  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  not  only  as  to 
his  own  immortality,  but  in  regard  to  the  im- 
mortal existence  of  the  souls  of  men.  If  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  reveals  to  us  a  new  di- 
mension of  spiritual  life,  in  the  intuitions  of 
which  we  are  able  to  identify  our  lives  with  the 
transcendent  ground  of  their  existence,  much 
more  will  these  intuitions  be  clear  to  the  Mas- 
ter, who  came  out  from  the  bosom  of  the  Father, 
and  whose  vision  would,  therefore,  be  ideally 
perfect.  That  insight,  in  which  he  realized  his 
oneness  with  his  father,  would  be  the  insight 
that  would  reveal  the  true.  Divine  nature  of 
the  life  that  he  lived.  The  problem  of  immor- 
tality would  not  exist  at  all  for  him,  and  he 
would  see  in  men  around  him,  however  ignorant 
and  degraded,  the  same  essential  nature,  which, 
on  its  lower  level  of  absorption  in  time  and 
sense,  had  lost  the  intuitions  of  its  higher  birth- 


194       PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

right.  His  wish  was  to  recall  men  to  their  lost 
inheritance,  and  raise  them  to  a  level  where 
their  deeper  intuitions  would  revive,  and  they 
would  see  their  true  destiny  with  something 
like  his  own  clarity  and  assurance.  When  it  is 
said  that  he  brought  life  and  immortality  to 
light,  the  insight  might  have  been  truly  and 
just  as  adequately  phrased,  the  life  of  immor- 
tality; for,  once  get  a  clear  vision  of  life,  and 
the  conviction  of  immortality  follows.  The 
Master  of  life  does  not  place  an  empty  hope 
before  us,  but  one  that  is  rich  in  the  promise 
of  fulfillment.  In  the  light  of  the  life,  the  hope 
blossoms  into  assurance. 

The  third  and  final  consideration  is  that  of 
the  bearing  of  the  doctrine  of  immortality  on 
the  problem  which  death  presents  to  us  men. 
If  man  were  merely  mortal,  and  yet  were  gifted 
with  the  power  of  prevision,  death  would  be  to 
him  the  king  of  terrors.  It  would  mean  to  him 
the  absolute  defeat  of  life,  and  the  skull  and 
bones  would  be  the  symbol  of  despair.  But  the 
doctrine  that  crowns  life  with  immortality  sets 
death  aside  from  the  path  of  life  as  no  longer 
an  absolute  fact.  Death  only  means  the  falling 
away  of  the  physical  and  mortal.  But  the  soul's 
real  self  is  transcendent;  its  nature  is  stable 
and  perdurable,  and  all  its  end-ideals  are  shaped 
in  the  moulds  of  the  eternal. 

To  die  is,  then,  only  to  break  the  moulds  of 
the  present  existence,  and  to  make  a  new  be- 
ginning in  the  drama  of  living.    That  this  is 


PHILOSOPHY  OP  RELIGION        195 

true,  we  need  not  doubt.  What  it  signifies  for 
the  new  life-chapter  we  cannot  say,  but  it  is  a 
legitimate  object  for  the  brush  of  a  hopeful 
imagination. 

We  may  state  the  outcome  of  this  lecture, 
and,  in  fact,  of  all  the  lectures,  in  the  following 
proposition:  The  soul  is  born  heir  to  an  im- 
mortal existence,  and  the  whole  teleological  sig- 
nificance of  the  struggle  of  its  life  may  be 
summed  up  in  that  fine,  old  scriptural  state- 
ment— it  seeks  a  house  not  made  with  hands; 
eternal  in  the  heavens. 


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